Already Dead
by Dannemund
Summary: Tony Sellers is absolutely miserable after the love of his life runs off with her ghoul lover; Phoebe Falconbridge tries to come to terms with being a monster; the further adventures of Marcelo and Joey. Rated M for lots of gore/violence, sexual innuendo/assault, swearing, and crazy deathclaw hybrids. Probably complete.
1. Tony and Phoebe

Note: I'm apparently channeling General Hospital or something. I dunno. Angst! This story follows Tony Sellers after the event of Everybody Dies (which comes after It's Not Forever). It will be updated with more descriptive text; this is the bare bones of the storyline, and it isn't finished yet. (Breaking my own rules.) Enjoy my little soap opera as it unfolds.

Update: The story is complete but I may come back to it. At the moment I want nothing to do with this monster I created.

* * *

 _Maybe I should just wear a mask._

Tony stared at himself in the mirror at his father's house, letting the water run until it almost overflowed the sink. He sighed to himself, not for the first time that morning, and washed his face carefully, feeling the raised scar along his cheek and trying to keep his right eye closed. Once he was done, he replaced the eye patch and looked at himself in the mirror again, and nodded.

The scar was atrocious but it only lent to his image, and that was something he honestly _had_ needed help with. It wasn't just his family that treated him carefully, now, but the whole of Gladstone, and certain parts of Spalding. Every time he came across an objective that joked about Crying Tony... Tony clenched his fists. They could say it all they wanted behind his back. But not―not to his face.

He'd not been over the water in two years. No reason to, anymore. He didn't think about that, didn't want the image in his head, anymore. No more Josephine.

He grabbed the sides of the sink and held onto it, willing himself not to beat his head into the mirror. _Again!_ He'd had more than enough glass in his face, to do something like that, but he desperately wanted to beat his brains out every time her shining eyes and brown face came to mind.

It had been two years and he still couldn't get that out of his head, no matter how often he'd tried to replace it with other thoughts. Even trying to picture Helen Eifler in his head was not enough. Josephine was firmly lodged in there and he was starting to think he'd die with her name on his goddamn lips like a fairy-tale fucking ending.

"Anthony, are you in there?" his sister called, banging on the door. "I have to pee."

"I'm almost done, May." He breathed out carefully, pulled the stopper from the sink and wiped the residual water away from his face and chest. He grabbed the leather jacket and t-shirt he'd removed, and opened the door. "It's all yours," he told her.

May Sellers, who always managed to look frumpled, opened her eyes wide at his appearance and then frowned. "Hey, you got a new scar," she said, jabbing him in the stomach. "You didn't tell dad, did you?"

"Scars are caused by injury," he said, evenly. "I report injury. Go on and leave me alone, May." He brushed past her and plunked himself down on the couch, and proceeded to pull on his t-shirt.

"Hey, boy," his father said, breezing through the house. He was gone in twenty seconds, out the door and down the walk, and Tony saw him jump the fence rather than unlock the gate. He swiveled his head to see his mother come storming into the room, and flinched at her gaze.

She was pissed. He knew why; Sue Sellers was not particularly happy with the events that had led up to Tony's being mangled, and now Amory was in the same position. Stuck on a hospital bed in the clinic in Gladstone, puking his guts out from the radiation and violent injury that he'd sustained trying to track down some putrescent ghoul in St. James. Tony could not go there, so it was up to the others at ARC. Tony felt some remorse for that but his mother had put her foot down on his father's neck like she wanted to break it, over the matter.

"Mom," he called. " _Mom!_ "

She furrowed her brows at him, one arm through his shirt and the other holding it in a frozen motion. "Good God, Anthony, did you get another scar?" she asked, and he sighed.

"Scars are part of the wasteland, Mom," he said, pulling his shirt through the other arm. He grimaced. "And I know Dad's got plenty."

"Jesse's scars are earned through ridiculous _stupidity_ ," she snarled, but her face softened. "You're my baby, Anthony." She smiled gently at him. "I don't like seeing you get hurt."

He shook his head at the maternal display. "I'm going to ARC," he said. "Going to see if Uncle Amos has anything new."

"You just got home a few hours ago, Anthony!"

"I know," he said. He stood, and rubbed his neck. He needed to try to get more sleep, but he was awake now, and he didn't see why he should laze about.

"...If you catch your father, please smack him upside the head for me," she said, knowing she couldn't argue. "And if you happen to visit Amory..." A pained look came across her face. "Just be careful, Anthony."

"I am always careful," he told his mother, and gave her a peck on the forehead.

He slung a rifle over his shoulder, and stepped out into Gladstone.

* * *

Gladstone, being a city that primarily produced wool, smelled like shit. All the time. The place smelled of the large amount of Delaines rumbling through the hills, followed by a few wary shepherds packing rifles and pistols and watching the hills and lakefront for trouble. Amos, when he was younger, had been a shepherd, and now his son was one, and he hoped that Kim wouldn't be tempted by the fast-paced and violent life that the ARC mercenaries led. Amos had gotten to his old age through prudence alone. It didn't seem like Kim was at all inclined. He held his breath on that judgement, though. He'd been wrong too many times to count, when it came to young people.

Like his younger "brother" Jesse Sellers, and his brood―Amos had expected Jesse to learn a lesson and ask his children not to follow in his footsteps. But that hadn't happened. The Sellers family was too volatile to break.

And he certainly didn't expect to see Tony for at least a day or two, since he'd reported in earlier that morning upon completion of a job. So, when his nephew breezed in through the door after Jesse claimed sanctuary in the five-room Pre-War-police-station-turned-ARC-HQ, he only squinted at the man and jerked a thumb to the back room where Jesse had holed himself up.

"Not here for Dad," he said, after raising his eyebrow at his uncle.

"Oh." Amos snorted. "Thought you were sent by Sue to come scrape him out of the cell and face matrimonial justice."

"Nah," Tony said. "Got any work?"

Amos turned himself to fully face his nephew and narrowed his eyes further. "You've only been home for six hours, Tony." Tony shrugged. Amos sighed and ran a hand over the desk, looking through the paperwork. "You'll wear yourself out," was all Amos said to him. The words contained volumes of unspoken advice.

"I am aware," Tony said, and his words told Amos that he was trying very hard to run away from memories that Amos knew full well would break him, if he didn't face them. Amos picked up a piece of paper and thrust it at the man, and sat back to watch his expression.

"Retrieval?" Tony's brow creased, and his eye patch moved with the motion. Amos watched the look in his remaining eye and saw confusion. "What is this?"

"Courier sent it in this morning. High priority, pays extremely well." Amos played a pencil across his knuckles and through his fingers. "There will be competition, to find the objective."

"It's not listed," Tony said, scanning the paper. "What is this―First Iron, stuff?"

"The First Iron is the boss up at Three-Mountain," Amos said, scratching the pencil on his temple. "I haven't been up there in ages, but they aren't particularly known for their friendly attitude. First Iron Falconbridge and his group..." Amos sighed. "I was going to toss it out. The courier said he'd delivered fifteen other missives with the same information."

"Why so many?"

Amos set his jaw and stared at his nephew. "Because the objective is a girl, and she's the First Iron's only daughter."

"That would explain the high price," Tony said, turning the paper over. "What's her name?"

"Phoebe Falconbridge." Amos looked up at him. "You can't be seriously thinking about this job."

"You told me once that we don't pick jobs because we like them." Tony shot his uncle a look, and Amos smiled at that. His words always came back to bite him on the ass, but rightly so.

"I did," Amos said. "I also said that the job picks us."

"Well, I am an exemplar member of ARC," Tony replied. "And I don't see why I shouldn't take on a job that could let you finally retire and get out of this madhouse."

Amos laughed loudly, and the pencil bounced out of his hands and onto the desk. "Young man, if you think I'm retiring and letting that jackass father of yours run this place into the ground―"

"I can hear you!" Jesse yelled, through the wall.

"I didn't say you were _deaf,_ " Amos called back. "Just a jackass!"

Jesse apparently felt it didn't deserve a response. Tony smiled a little, but Amos saw his cheek twitch in remorse. The scar was terrible; Amos knew Tony had been very upset with it, after that mess in St. James. He hardly smiled anymore, anyway, since Josephine had gone off with that ghoul Marcelo. Amos sighed to himself and wished Tony had not been so in love, or so... young. That was it, the youth that damned them.

"Look, if you want to take this one, I'll let you," Amos told him, "but you can't go alone."

"I don't work with partners," Tony said, and gave him a sharp glance.

"I know, but Three-Mountain is too dangerous for you to go alone." Amos looked back through the building. "I'd tell you to take your father, but Sue will rightly thread me with a larding needle, so..."

"You think I'm _trying_ to get killed?" Tony asked him.

Amos turned swiftly and frowned. "No, I know you're always careful. I just want someone out there to watch your back."

" _I_ watch my back." Tony crumpled the paper, slightly. His temper was rising. Amos put his tongue between his teeth and bit back the remark he was going to make, and let the man calm down before pursuing the matter.

"I'm not taking Haynes," Tony said, when he finally managed to get his temper under control. "He has no respect, whatsoever, for anyone other than himself."

"Haynes is the only one we have, right now," Amos said, and he knew that Tony would be gone the minute he stepped outside. There was no stopping him, when he wanted to do something―much like another Sellers man, he jumped right into a fray without thinking. At least they were able to wiggle out... usually.

"Let me do it," Tony said. His voice was firm but easy, and not what Amos expected. "Not to prove anything, not to get myself killed, or whatever you think I'm doing when I go out."

Amos protested. "I don't think you're trying to―"

"Just―let me try, and if I find out the girl has been collected or I can't find her in two weeks, I'll come home." The look on his face was one Amos knew all too well.

"You have to get over _her_ , Tony," Amos said, abruptly.

Tony crushed the paper in his hand, and closed his eye. "I'm already over her."

"You haven't moved on," Amos said. "That friendly nurse down at the clinic, she was interested in you, and you blew her off like wind on the wastes."

Tony laughed, low and bitter. "No, Uncle Amos," he said, ruefully. "No, _she_ was the one who didn't want to carry around a useless lump of a man."

Amos drew a sharp breath and exhaled. "I'm going to assume those are your words, since I know that Helen wouldn't act like that."

Tony shoved the paper in his jacket and adjusted his weapon. "I'll see you in a few weeks," he said, and strode out of the building.

Amos ran a hand through his beard and knocked on the wall, and told Jesse that he needed to get his skinny behind back home to beg Sue for lenience. "Your son is going after that Three-Mountain bounty," he told him. "And I don't know if we'll ever see him again."

* * *

Phoebe chopped down into the creature on the floor of the Metro station, crinkling her nose at the smell. Her instincts told her the thing was edible, but she could also tell that it was slightly irradiated. She smelled it. It was strange because she didn't know how or why she knew, but she did. It looked like a pink mass of wrinkles and whiskers, and she found that somewhat disgusting, but she'd never been outside of T-Division before and she was hungry as hell, and it was edible.

She sliced a bit of the hindquarters off and looked at it, dubiously, letting the knife dip to the floor as she crouched over the creature. It smelled... okay, she guessed, like meat that she'd had back home, in T-Division. She would definitely try to cook it. Eating raw meat was not something she would ever consider. _Disgusting._

She carried the knife and the dripping meat to the tiny bathroom she'd converted into a temporary bedroom and kitchen. That was also disgusting, but she didn't have much other option, and she sure wasn't going out of the Metro. Things out there might eat her.

She wasn't going back. Not after―

Phoebe put a hand to her head and closed her eyes, feeling a headache take a blinding place in her face. Why couldn't she remember? She remembered waking up in the operating room at T-Division, seeing the needles poised over her. She remembered running, and hitting the chain link fencing outside the compound, and―

She woke up wearing a hospital gown and not much else, in the darkness outside.

"Ungh," she said, and the pain got even more intense.

 _Nevermind._ She wouldn't think about it, she would just stay away and make new memories. Even if those memories were just her eating―whatever that pink thing was―and moping about a Metro tunnel for the rest of her life.

Her father had often told her about there being life outside of the compound, and about the heathens that lived in the Wilder Wastes. Phoebe didn't know that she believed as much as he'd told her, but she had no other information and she certainly couldn't afford to believe anything else, unless proven wrong. "Out there, ignorance is the difference between living and dying." Her head hurt a little, remembering that. She didn't know why.

She heated the pan on the small hot plate, and tossed in the meat. It smelled almost too good to be true, and she jealously watched the pan as the meat lay in it. This would be the first thing she had to eat in two days, not that she hadn't tried. The Metro had food dispensers, but she couldn't pry them open, and she'd made too much noise yesterday to try again, today.

And that was a shame, because she'd seen Dandy Boy Apples in there and if that wasn't her favorite food, she would eat her hat. Phoebe laughed to herself, then paused. Was that a noise?

A banging noise, a dull sound, seemingly coming closer. Rhythmic. Probably a person.

 _Shit!_ She stood, switched off the hot plate, and grabbed out the meat, tearing into it even though it was only half cooked. She needed the energy, and who knew what was out there. She'd already came across some nasty people―

Her head seared with pain again. She knew it was danger, regardless of her inability to remember what she did when she had to be violent.

Phoebe opened the door an inch and held a wrench in one hand, the knife in the other. She was ready, no matter what came, or what she might not remember.

* * *

Shell had been hiding for two days, trying to keep Bitch and her fucking Dog off her ass. She was worn the hell out from running back and forth from her hiding spots, so she decided to just get out of the Metro entirely.

Did that goddamn Dog never sleep? Shell's legs were too tired to continue on, her brain was filled with fuzz, and she could feel her stomach trying to get her attention with ever-increasing pangs of hunger.

But if Bitch found her, she would die. She'd been promised that, by the screams of her fellow raiders as Dog had splattered them one by one. She was last in line to be executed―maybe because she was female, hah, weren't they stupid to think she was less dangerous for being a girl―and her bindings were looser, so she'd taken the chance.

Now she felt like her head was going to explode with panic, instead of with a bullet. Like she'd promised herself. She didn't intend to let anyone else get the pleasure of killing her, but herself.

A hint of food smell in the air drew her attention to an outlet in the Metro, and she followed the smell until she saw a dead mole rat laid out on the floor. Someone had cut a piece off and left the rest. _Lucky!_ Shell looked around but didn't see or hear anyone around. She grabbed the mole rat and eyed a doorway. _Should get to cover, anyway._

She dragged the mole rat by one leg, holding her shotgun by the other, and kept her eyes peeled as she moved it toward the door. _Double Lucky!_ No one was here, no one at all.

The room smelled like food, and her stomach did a flop as she realized that someone must have been cooking here, and recently―she dropped the mole rat and aimed her shotgun at the movement in the corner, and pulled the trigger.

Some skinny little girl in a baggy dress of some kind had been about to attack her with a wrench and a knife, of all things. When the girl dropped, her weapons clattered to the floor and Shell put the shotgun to the back of her head. She laughed, viciously. "You're damn _stupid,_ " she said, and squeezed the trigger. "Stupidity gets you killed out here."

The girl's blood was almost black in the Metro light, and Shell noticed it had a weird oily sheen to it, rainbow colors. She was distracted enough to not notice the girl putting a hand out to her ankle and pull her leg out from underneath her.

She screamed, when she saw the flash of the shotgun reflected in the girl's eyes. Black claws began to render her face. The world crashed and Shell felt herself being destroyed, and she gurgled a laugh because at least that stupid marauder and his Bitch hadn't caught up to her.


	2. The Metro

Tony met the first competition for the job about four days into his trip north. He examined what maps were available―very few, since this Three-Mountain place was very xenophobic, and gathered some supplies to keep him going for the first few days. He had been late in leaving Gladstone because his father, who always seemed to know where his kids were at all times, had accosted him and asked him not to go. He went, anyway, because he had nothing else to do with himself in Gladstone except to ruminate on the women in his life that had abandoned him.

The competition was an older merc and some dumb woman that followed him around like he was the best thing since the world ended. Tony had little patience for the idiotic woman and her man, so he did what he could to avoid questions, and continued on his journey.

He did find out from the woman that they were attempting to locate the girl overland. And this was a trend that continued―none of the mercs that he met along the way seemed at all interested in the Metro system or the rare chance that the girl was capable of making it across the water east or west of Three-Mountain. Tony ascertained that the Metro system was almost entirely ruined, and was not an option. Too many raiders, too many creatures. Mercs knew better than to try it.

He heard from a merchant on the road that the Metro was home to some kind of crazy boogeyman. He laughed it off, but the look on the face of the merchant's bodyguard made him reconsider. He camped with them, and wheedled the story from the bodyguard as thoroughly as possible.

"There's some kind of bad guy in there," was how it started. "No one got out alive, at first. No one could figure out what was killing people who went into the Metro, killing the raiders. People started to think there was a monster, and it stuck."

"At first?" he asked.

"Well..." the bodyguard, a tanned and handsome woman, with a tiny but rare smile much like Tony, shrugged. "Every few months, a raider will come up from the Metro with a story about someone they call Bitch and a big-ass marauder named Dog, killing raiders and taking their goods."

"But not the story-teller," Tony said.

"No. Usually it's a girl," the bodyguard said. "I saw the last one, myself. Wasn't more than eighteen, scared absolutely shitless. If I were you, I'd stay away from the Metro."

"But if someone is down there, killing raiders―"

"Then it is a good thing," the bodyguard said. "Because those fuckers deserve every bit of lead there is to spare." She tapped her head knowingly, and her face was hard. "And you look like you should understand that, too."

Tony ignored the pointed comment about his appearance. "I am not afraid of raiders," he countered.

"Neither am I," she replied. "Doesn't mean I wasn't given _reason_ to, at one point."

Tony weighed the options, and determined that he should continue his job―still had seven days before he would consider the job null and void, anyway. And this Metro story was interesting enough that he might as well give it a shot at the same time.

The land north of Gladstone was full of radiation, and rocky as hell. Tony thought it was actually worse than Grayling, because the mountains here had been blasted by the bombs just as dramatically, but had been split into numerous thirty-foot deep craters, all deeply scored into the rock at an angle. The effect looked like someone had stuck their hands into the earth, a thousand quick little jabs into the ground. Irradiated water pooled in every single one of them, and Tony had left his I.V. line in place for RadAway, it was so bad. It made it difficult to cross, and he understood why he'd been warned off from the area.

He approached a place called The Republic but shied west, away from it, when he noticed ghouls through his scope. Too many of them for his taste, and he was instantly angered by the thought. He knew that was stupid, being angry at a whole group of people who could no more help their condition than Tony could help loving that chocolate-skinned―he sighed. He shouldn't remind himself more than he needed to.

As he was staring at the entrance to a Metro station that had seen better days, he wondered how long it would take him to get himself killed. Even if he'd told his uncle he wasn't trying, it was bound to happen. Tony would rather be killed on a job than stay at home and shoot himself in the fucking head because he couldn't get her out of his head.

And he knew that was stupid, too , but he couldn't help the feelings as they wormed around his brain. He walked down into the Metro to test his life on this so-called boogeyman.

* * *

Phoebe realized she'd been shot. No amount of cursing could take it back and she cried without stopping at the pain, because it _hurt!_ She'd never been shot before, and by the look of the weapon, she had been lucky it wasn't her head. Her entire arm hurt from the tips of her fingertips to the muscles in her shoulder.

She looked at the injury and understood that this wasn't as simple as she figured it should be; the weapon used metal pellets in a wide spread to cause pain and damage. It was not a plasma weapon, with which she would have been more familiar, nor was it a laser, with which she was also familiar, either one of those would have easier to tend. This was bad. This was _real_ bad, and she didn't know what to do, and she was bleeding _everywhere,_ and she couldn't stop _crying_ ―

And to make matters _worse_ , she heard another sound in the distance, someone was walking around in the Metro entrance.

Phoebe forced herself to stop making noise by jamming one of the leather straps from the dead woman's outfit into her mouth, and picked up the weapon. She looked it over, briefly, and understood how it worked. _Why?_ ―her head hurt again, and she ignored the question, just accepted it and worked with it.

Eventually, she was going to have to deal with that. She held the weapon to her chest, two hands on it, aimed it up, and waited for the person out in the Metro to walk by the door. She wasn't going to wait, this time, to see who it was. She didn't have any option.

The footsteps stopped, and a throat cleared. "Well," a man said. "I'm here, monster. You can kill me now." He chuckled. Phoebe felt the pain spreading, clenched her teeth on the strap, and blinked through the tears at the doorway.

Someone came into view and she pulled the trigger, not once or twice, but five times, in her panic to make sure whoever it was didn't shoot her first. The first shot impacted the door frame, and the man yelled out; the next three shots went high and spread across the ceiling, and the fifth shot would have been perfect―if the man hadn't ducked out of the doorway and disappeared after the first shot.

"Damn!" he swore, from the hallway entrance. She heard another noise, sounded like metal against metal.

"Don't you come in here!" she shrieked, spitting out the leather strap. "I will _shoot_ you!"

"You already did!" he yelled back, angrily. "Dammit, that hurt!"

"Well―" she felt the pain catching up to her. "Well, don't come in here, again!"

It was silent for a moment. Then, he laughed a little, like he was relieved, and she frowned. "I mean it, man, don't even!"

"I take it you killed this raider here?" he asked, and she saw a piece of debris bounce down onto the dead woman.

Her legs had fallen across the doorway when Phoebe woke up from her fugue and realized she'd killed the woman. Phoebe didn't understand what a raider would necessarily be; she only knew that heathens came in a wide variety of ways, all of which were supposed to be terrible. If the woman was a raider, anyway. She didn't trust this man.

"I'll kill you, too," she said, steeling herself.

"I don't suppose you checked the drum on that shotgun, did you?" he asked, his voice floating through the doorway.

"Wha―Drum?" Phoebe didn't know what he was referring to. Just because she knew how to operate the gun―her head hurt again. "Stop confusing me! Go _away!_ "

"I was going to go," he said, "but you won't let me walk past the door, so thank you, but no. I'm staying right here."

Phoebe's arm started to waver and she felt blood dripping through the flimsy hospital gown. "Well, you can't," she said, her voice catching the pain. "You come out where I can see you, and I'll shoot."

She registered movement and fired the weapon―but nothing came out of it. Phoebe looked down in confusion and didn't have enough time to catch that the man had moved into the doorway with his own weapon, a rifle, and was aiming it at her.

"Drop it," he said. "And any other weapons you have."

Phoebe shivered, and couldn't stop herself. "Don't―" she said, dropping the gun, raising her hands. She jerked in pain at her arm wound, and began cradling it. "Please!"

He wasn't very tall, but loomed over her like a giant, as she examined him. He had short black hair, messily arranged on his head. His skin was brownish and a lone bright blue eye stared at her above a nasty scar that ran from one mouth corner to his ear, but no beard. The other eye was covered in a black eye patch and was bleeding from a few lone pellets that had managed to grace his temple and cheek. His outfit was―some kind of animal hide, maybe. And that rifle was larger than life in her field of vision, too.

"I won't shoot you," he said. "Are you Phoebe Falconbridge?"

Her eyes widened, and she gasped, and then she fainted.

* * *

Bitch heard the shots, exploding in the distance. She turned to Dog, and gestured silently. He shrugged, put his feet up on a chair, and grumbled a little. "Didn't get enough blood today?" he rasped, from behind the black face mask he wore.

"Maybe," Bitch said. "Or maybe I just love to see you smash bastards into the ground." She was grinning behind her blastmaster helmet.

"Huh," he grumbled. She knew he heard her excitement. "I need sleep," he said.

"You were asleep five fucking minutes ago!" she said, angrily. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"The only time I get away from you," he muttered, and she growled. "I'll kill 'em later," he added, stretching out his arms behind his head. "When you're done complaining."

"Fuck you!" she yelled, and he launched himself at her from the chair, and she laughed.

They wrestled on the ground for a moment, and Dog won―he won every time, naturally, he was stronger and bigger than her―and Bitch cowed to him. She let him win, and curled up with him on the grungy mattress, cooing in his ear.

He replied with a snore, and she scoffed.

* * *

Tony laid aside his weapon and examined the injury the girl had received. She wasn't badly wounded, but it bled copiously. He noticed her blood was strange-looking, and smelled like chemicals. If it wasn't the objective, and he was wasting his time with a junkie of some kind... He sighed. Only one way to find out.

Quickly he went through his pack and pulled out a stimpak, and jabbed her in the shoulder with it. He held the injured arm up over her heart and wiped the blood off with a bit of cloth, then watched it healing. He really hoped she hadn't passed out from blood loss. It would take more than one stimpak to replace, and he only had three left.

Pellets from the shotgun wad began to pop out of her skin and bounce off his raised thigh as he held the arm, leaning on his other knee, and he watched carefully. The shot had gone across the underside of her arm, likely when she had raised it to attack. He'd seen that kind of injury before. He shot a glance at the dead raider and then the girl, and wondered what she'd cut the dead woman up with. Looked like a rake.

She was pale, almost gray. Maybe he'd have to apply RadAway to her, too; he hoped not. He needed that for his return trip. Her hair was pale, too, but sort of blonde-gray, and she had pale gray eyes, too. It was strange how faded she looked. He noticed her long fingers twitching, as he held her arm up, and grabbed up his rifle with one hand, holding it on her just in case.

Her fingers were covered in blood, and her fingernails very sharp. He stared at them for a moment. She almost looked like she had―

She swiped at him with the other arm, catching the side of his head, pulling his eye patch off his head. He ducked back and swore, and placed his rifle directly at her heart. "Stop!" he said, and to his surprise, she did.

Her eyes grew wide. "You―" He was still holding her arm up, his knee at her side. She looked him up and down. "Are you crying?" she asked.

Tony's face twitched involuntarily, but he kept his temper in check. "No," he said, in a low voice. "You shot me in the eye." Which was true. His eye patch hung from her hand, and she lowered it slowly.

"But―"

" _Listen,_ " he said, testily. "I won't shoot you, if you stop fighting. Promise."

She looked at the rifle and he saw her eyes focus on the barrel. "Yeah, okay," she said, weakly. "My arm doesn't hurt, what happened."

Tony lowered the rifle to his side, away from her reach, and ran a finger along the underside of the arm, catching on the now-healed bumpy scars. "Stimpak."

She jerked and he reached for his gun. "Tickled," she said. "Sorry. Okay. You helped me."

Tony nodded. He snagged his eye patch, and let go of her arm. His head started to hurt from the stray shot but how he was going to check that without a mirror, he had no idea, so he ignored it. He positioned his patch and put it to rights over his eye.

"I _am_ Phoebe," she murmured. "How did you know?"

Tony wiped blood from his head and backed away, pulling his rifle with him. He shoved the dead raider to the side and sat on his heels in front of her. "First Iron Falconbridge sent out a couple of requests for assistance," he said.

She looked shocked. "I won't―"

"Look, if you don't want to go, I won't make you," he said, surprising himself. "But your father put a very high price on your head, and you are less than five miles from Three-Mountain, so someone is bound to find you again."

"I'll shoot them, too," she muttered. Her voice didn't sound very sincere, though.

Tony forced a laugh. "I believe it," he said, and felt his face hurting. Reminded him a little too much of―he let his mouth fall into a frown. "Why don't you want to go back?"

"I―" she opened her mouth and closed it. "I don't know, exactly," she said. "Just―pain, and I can't think straight―"

Tony looked at her head. No obvious wounds. She was bloody as all get out from the shotgun wound. She was also wearing something that he honestly couldn't figure out, some kind of long shirt, maybe? Or a dress? Looked thin as paper and worthless at keeping anything off her skin.

"You hit your head, maybe?" he asked.

"Don't know," she said. "I've been getting headaches when I try to remember what happened."

He glanced to the doorway and stood, put his rifle over his shoulder, and poked his head out. "Are you alone?"

"Yes," she said. "Except for you and the dead one."

"Alright," he said, turning back. "I'm going to take the raider's clothes off so you have something better to wear than that... thing. Wherever you want to go, doesn't matter, you need armor." He crouched down over the raider and tugged on the straps of the armor.

"But I'll look like a... raider," she said, and he paused, mid-tug.

"You have a point." Tony sighed, and sat back on his heels again. "What do you want to do, Phoebe?"

"Um." She looked confused. "Why do I have to change, again?"

Tony stood and stared down at her. "Maybe you _did_ hit your head." She wasn't making a whole lot of sense. He moved toward her.

"Don't touch me!" she said, and put her hands up again. "I―I might hurt you."

"Might?" he stared at her harder.

"I don't remember killing the... raider... there." She looked a little frightened. "I don't want to kill someone else... unless I have to."

Tony looked at her hands again, and he'd be damned if she didn't have claws. "What the hell is going on," he muttered to himself.

"Don't―" She wiped her eyes and blood smeared across her face. "Don't take me back. I can't go back there."

Tony was quiet for a moment, trying to wrap his head around her claws. "Yeah, okay," he answered, his voice strained. "But you still need clothing that is more appropriate. ...And less see through," he added, even though he hadn't noticed that until that moment. The long-shirt-thing was definitely going to have to go.

She looked down and nodded, slowly. "Okay. Okay. _Um._ "

Tony was sure that she had hit her head somehow, and that whatever the hell was going on with her hands was something he couldn't begin to try to fathom. "Get up," he said, instead. "Wash up in the sink, and I'll get the pants off this woman, and we'll go from there."

Phoebe nodded, again, and pushed herself up off her feet, and Tony hissed a breath out in surprise. "What―" _the fuck,_ he caught himself saying.

"What is it?" she asked.

How could she look so damn normal and still have monster feet and hands? he wondered. Good God. Her toes were much too long―like those weird fingers―and practically had talons on them. "Nothing," he said, swallowing hard. What did he get himself into? He wished Amos had been a little more forthcoming with information about Three-Mountain.

She washed her hands, shakily, in the sink, and used the cloth he gave her to wipe her face off. Tony busied himself removing the pants from the dead raider, tossing the severed hands the woman sported to the side. Once he'd sanitized the pants of raider accessories, he handed the article to her and kept his back to her while he tried to figure out if she could even wear the boots.

" _Um._ " Phoebe tapped his shoulder and he almost jumped out of his skin. "Sorry. Um. Is this okay?"

He turned, swept his eye from her crazy feet to her hips, and jerked back when he realized she'd removed the shirt thing altogether. " _Shit,_ " he muttered, and hurriedly removed his jacket. "Don't move," he added, when she started to take a step.

Tony stripped his t-shirt off and handed it back up to her, replaced his jacket and felt the countless scars across his abdomen rubbing on the leather. It would hurt, but he'd rather not―see this strange person, half-naked, again. Wasn't right.

"Um." She pulled the boots on―without issue, thankfully―and Tony felt his fingers twitching, wondering if he could convince her to cover up her freakish hands. But he wasn't removing any more clothing, unless he was wounded.

"...Alright," he said. "Let's take a walk, alright?"


	3. Bitch and Dog

Phoebe was relieved―really―when the man turned out to be decent. He didn't exhibit any signs of anger after the initial remark she'd made about his leaking eye. Her head hurt thinking about that―anatomy―so she'd dropped the subject from her mind.

He didn't tell her his name, though, and as she was walked behind him with her toes jammed into the boots, uncomfortably, she was trying to think of a way to ask him. It wouldn't do for her to call him "You" or "Man". He was being very helpful, and she didn't want to be rude.

He seemed nervous about her, though, jumping when she made noises to get his attention about a dead body in one of the corners, or a box of chips that she devoured when he said they were probably edible. Phoebe wondered if it was her hands, he kept looking at them. His hands were weird-looking, all black and bumpy, and thick-looking.

"Is... there something wrong with my hands?" she asked him, straight out.

He jerked a little. "Uh―"

"Is there something wrong with your hands?"

"No," he said, firmly. "To both questions."

"Are you―"

"Be quiet, Phoebe," he said, and she looked down in shame. She shouldn't have bothered to ask, now she felt guilty for bringing up yet another physical concern. She should rather be worried he was going to take her home―her head gave a sharp pain. They walked in silence for a long time.

She heard it before he did, a weird rumbling sound like someone breathing hard. "Do you―" she started, but then remembered what he'd said.

"What? What is it, now?" he asked, and his voice was on the edge of anger.

"Do you hear that noise?" she whispered.

He looked around, and then back at her. "No," he said. "What noise."

"Sounds like snoring," she answered. "Not very close, but near enough."

He pulled his rifle off his shoulder and kept it out as they walked through the gray-walled Metro tunnel. He'd said they were going for a walk―what if he was taking her back to―she stopped in mid-stride and sniffed the air. If he was taking her home, she would know, it would smell like home. The only thing she could smell right now was the man, he smelled like wet skin and something musky, and―

"I smell a ghoul," she said.

He looked at her incredulously. She shrugged at his expression. "Smells like radiation."

He clenched his jaw, then, and looked around. "If you can tell where radiation is―"

"A little," she said. "Don't know why." Then she colored because she'd interrupted him, and she was being entirely too rude. "I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"Let me know if it changes," was all he said, and they continued down the darkened corridors. She couldn't see her feet, it was so dark. She wondered how he managed to see so well, with one eye. The other, under the patch, had been the same color, but he wouldn't cover it unless it didn't work, right?

The silence started to strain her, make her feel like she couldn't stop herself from talking. Why was that? She clenched her fist and felt shaky. "Um."

"Shush," he whispered, and crouched behind a pile of rubble. She did the same, and he held up his rifle.

A bullet ricocheted off the wall beside her, and she shrieked, which startled the man, and he looked at her briefly. It was long enough for another shot to echo through the tunnel and rip into his skin, digging itself deep into the muscle above his shoulder.

A loud, echoing growl came through the tunnel, and Phoebe looked out over the rubble to see―the ghoul smell―coming closer, very fast. She grabbed at the man, held up his arm where he was reeling in pain, and pointed his rifle toward the moving figure. He saw what she was doing, and his finger twitched on the trigger, letting loose a round. It went into the figure's chest, just over the heart, and it slowed.

It made a horrible growling sound, and lifted it's arms over it's head, and the man shoved her out of the way before dodging, himself. "Damn!" he yelled. " _Damn!_ "

Phoebe scrabbled backwards on the rubble, staring at the weapon. An iron bar, with a piece of concrete on the end. She'd never seen anything like that, before. "Damn!" the man yelled again, and held out a hand to the figure as it lifted the weapon again. "Stop, Marcelo!"

The ghoul-smell in black armor stopped, turned his head slowly toward the man. He chuckled, rasping, and lowered the club. " _Bitch!_ " he yelled, back at the tunnel. "Get over here."

From the shadows down the tunnel a smaller figure also in black armor, and wearing a helmet that covered her whole head, came to join them. "What the―" she said. "Oh, fuck _me!_ Tony, will you stop shooting every man I date?"

The ghoul-smell laughed harder, and Phoebe shook with fear, lying on the rubble with her elbows digging into the dirt and rocks. "You shot me first, Josephine," the man said, very quietly.

"Hey, that isn't my name, anymore. You call me Bitch, now." The woman in black nudged the massive ghoul-smell and laughed. "Right, Dog?"

Dog shrugged. "Whatever," he said. Phoebe was entirely confused.

"Who's the girl, Tony?" Bitch asked. "New girlfriend?"

The man―Tony―pushed himself up from the rubble and brushed himself off, wincing when he ran his hand along his wounded shoulder. "No," he said, and held out a hand to Phoebe. "Protection order." He helped her up to her feet.

Bitch nodded, and grunted at Phoebe. "Hey, is he lying to me? I don't like liars."

Phoebe stared, her eyes wide and hands shaking. "N-no," she whispered. She stared at the big man, the ghoul-smell. "Wh―"

"Trust me, Phoebe, it's best not to ask," Tony told her, critically. "You'll just be more confused."

"What- _ever,_ " Bitch drawled. "C'mon, Dog, let's beat it." She slung her weapon over her shoulder and moved down the tunnel without the big man.

"Merc," Dog said, "think you need to feed that one." He gestured at Phoebe. She averted her eyes, feeling her stomach rumbling.

"Probably," Tony said.

"Come on," Dog said, and they followed him back toward the ramshackle fenced-in area where Bitch had already gone, parking herself in a chair at a small table.

"Why you gotta invite them home?" Bitch complained.

"Neighborly," Dog said, and poked Bitch hard in the chest. "Be nice, Bitch."

She muttered a complaint, but offered a seat to Phoebe. "It ain't much, but it's home," she said. "What have you been up to, Tony?"

"Staying alive," he said, his voice quiet and sad. "I hear you've become the boogeyman."

Bitch laughed. Tony looked miserable. Phoebe looked back and forth between them, then stood, and offered him the seat. He shook his head. "No, Phoebe, thank you."

Dog slapped a box of Dandy Boy Apples on the table and growled lightly at Phoebe, and she felt tears stinging her eyes from the tension. "I―" she started, and then she started crying.

 _I don't understand anything about the Wilder Wastes,_ she thought. _Maybe I_ should _go home._

* * *

Tony didn't know what to do. It was not the first time he'd felt that way. The first thought he'd had when he realized who it was, was that he hoped Marcelo would smash his head in and get it over with. He felt like Phoebe probably did―which was why he thought she'd started crying―completely out of sorts and confused, and he also felt all the pain and anger from losing... _her_... come crashing into his head.

Josephine, acting like a raider, holed up in the tunnels of a dead Metro, way out north. He'd not seen her in two years; two years of loneliness, getting rejected, sadness, and trying not to fall apart were about to catch up with him, and he had the girl to think about―he clenched his jaw. _Get angry, not sad,_ he thought. _Josephine knew the whole damn time, never said a word about it, let you dangle at the end of the line. It wasn't your fault, right?_ _She really_ is _a―_

"Phoebe, sit down," he said, his voice suddenly hard. "It's rude not to accept an offer of hospitality." He stared Josephine down while he spoke.

"Oh-ho," Josephine said. "Nice. You finally grew some balls."

"Fuck _you,_ Bitch," he said. She jerked her head like he'd struck her.

Marcelo chuckled. "Stupid merc fuck." He pushed the box nearer to Phoebe, then assumed a guard stance at the "doorway". Tony felt the bullet wound starting to burn. He didn't stop looking at Josephine, his face cold.

"Well, I'm glad to see you've moved on with your life," she said, neutrally. "I know I have. And..." she turned her head slightly to the girl, who was opening the box shakily. "This is an interesting turn of events. Who is she?"

Phoebe gulped down a large piece of a candied apple and gurgled a little. "Phoebe is my objective," he told Josephine. "That is all. Once she eats, we'll be on our way."

"And where is that?" she asked, drawing a circle on the table with one finger.

"Not your business."

Josephine laughed, rudely. "You know, Dog, I feel antsy all of a sudden. Maybe we should escort Tony out of the Metro." She looked over at the ghoul.

"No," Marcelo said. "Stay out of this one."

Josephine looked offended. "You're no fun anymore," she snapped. "I ought to stop playing with you."

Marcelo stomped over to her, lifted her out of the chair by one shoulder and slammed her into the tunnel wall, none too gently. He rumbled something into her neck, and she laughed, but it was a happy laugh. Tony's heart dropped into his stomach, hearing that.

It really came down to the fact that he was not enough of a man to catch Josephine. And that pissed him off, very badly, but also made his head spin and made him want to shoot himself to death even more than before. A goddamn filthy ghoul was able to catch her, a strong as hell, violent, decaying _monster_ could keep her attention, but he, Anthony Sellers, could not. He ground his teeth together so hard that he tasted blood―

"Why does he smell like ghoul?" Phoebe asked him, and Tony was ripped from the hell of his mind to face her.

"Because he is one," Josephine said, and made a small moaning noise, before Marcelo released her from his grip. Tony bit his tongue and kept the pressure on it until he broke the surface. "You wanna see?"

"No, thank you," Phoebe said. She was looking at Tony, and she had her hand held out, with one of the apples, offering it to him. Tony blinked slowly, and shook his head, his tongue bleeding into his mouth. _God, I just want to go away, finish your food, please, Phoebe,_ he thought. Phoebe paused for a moment, then put the apple back into the box, and pushed it across the table. "Thank you for the food, Dog."

Marcelo grunted, and nodded. Josephine rubbed her neck, where it was exposed from her armor, and Tony saw she had a purple mark. He'd bitten her through his mask so hard she had a mark. _Motherfucker_ ―

Phoebe's hand was on his shoulder, then. "Can we... go," she asked him. "Please?"

"Yes," he answered, and turned, and strode away.

* * *

"Who―" Phoebe stumbled on a piece of debris, and fell. She hissed in pain.

"Don't even bother asking," Tony said, his voice seething. "I won't answer. Where do we go now, Phoebe?"

She looked up and he was offering her his hand again, and it made her feel awkward. She sat back from her hands and rested on her feet, her knees digging into the rubble laying around the Metro. She put her hands in her lap and looked into the darkness beyond them, and she didn't know what to say, again.

"Phoebe?" he asked, and withdrew his hand. "Where do you want to go?"

She heaved a sigh. "Nowhere," she said.

"Want to take a break, then?"

She slumped forward and stared at her hands. "I don't know anymore."

"I will go wherever you want," he said, seriously, "as long as it gets us the hell away from that bitch and her ghoul."

Phoebe could hear the hate in his voice, and it hurt her. She remembered hearing hate like that, before, and her head began to hurt again. "I'm tired of being in pain," she muttered. "Everything _hurts._ "

Tony nodded, and crouched down in front of her. "Me, too," he said. "Would it make you feel better to cause some? I need help digging the .32 round out of my neck."

She looked up at him and she saw the blood on his face and she'd caused that, hadn't she. "If you want me to," she said.

"I think I can trust you with a knife," he said. "You can't do any worse than I've already had."

He found them a bathroom and took his leather jacket off, and―to her surprise, the skin from his hands, which she realized were gloves. Why hadn't she thought that before―well, he was all scarred in the face, she'd only assumed the rest of him was like that, scarred and messed up. The two― _raiders?_ ―in the tunnel, Dog and Bitch, well she knew that Dog was a ghoul, knew what he would roughly look like, and the other had been clothed but for a tiny bit of skin at the neck―

"Phoebe," Tony said. "What are you doing?"

She had her hands pressed onto his, on his knees while he sat on the floor, naked from the waist up. She felt a flush of embarrassment for losing her head. "Sorry, I―" she sighed. "I thought your gloves were skin." She removed her hands.

He chuckled. "Alright," he said, and pulled out a combat knife, much longer and sharper than the one she'd had before―what had she done with hers? She'd left it, in her confusion. "Here," he handed it to her. "Just cut along the top until we can get it out."

"I don't―"

"Phoebe, just do it." She held the knife as steadily as she could, kneeling behind him, and cut into the top of the muscle gently. "That's torture," he muttered. "Got to push harder."

"I don't want to hurt you," she murmured.

Tony laughed, sounding sad. "I'm _already_ hurting, Phoebe."

The knife went deeper, and Tony wiggled out a bloody bullet. He grabbed up some kind of plastic thread and a needle, and sewed up his shoulder, to a point, and Phoebe took over for him when his fingers got too slippery to move properly. He didn't have long fingernails, like she did, and she was confused.

Did everyone look like him? Did everyone have the same kind of short nails, and that skin color? He didn't look like her. He was brown like the ground outside the Metro, a light color but still not gray. He had blue eyes―

She hooked the eye patch again, and pulled it away from his hair. Tony jerked and slapped her hand, pinning it to the back of his head. She made a little squeaking noise, and slipped her hand away.

She didn't look like that.

"I'm different," she muttered, and crawled to the corner, and curled up. Memories, painful ones, her father telling her she wasn't the same, telling her she was made for―for what? For pain? That was all she could feel. Just pain, never-ending. She raked her fingernails across her arm, felt the skin break.

She had skin like concrete, rough on the outside. She had fingers that ended in sharp claws. She had―

"Everyone's different, Phoebe," he said. He wiped blood from his shoulder. "Sometimes our differences make us, well, strange, to others, but that's not our fault."

She had to go home, she didn't belong here. Soon enough, like he said, someone would come get her. Someone who might not be as gentle, who might be more like that Bitch and her Dog, and might shoot at her, like the raider did.

"I should go home," she moaned.

* * *

Tony sighed to himself. Whatever Phoebe was―he'd seen plenty of creatures in the wastes, but nothing quite like her. She wasn't as obviously out of place with her feet covered up, but she was strange in her mannerisms, and that didn't help. He'd seen too much weird stuff to judge, and she seemed scared as hell.

"If that's what you want," Tony answered. "Hopefully you can find a different shirt before we get there, because I'd really like my shirt back."

A wad of cotton hit him in the back and he turned, saw she'd removed his shirt and thrown it at him. She was curled up in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth, hands clutching her forearms, digging in. She was bleeding.

"I didn't mean right _now,_ " he said. "Stop hurting yourself." Phoebe didn't quit, and he got up from the floor, walking over to her. He knelt down, grabbed her hands and tried to pry them back from her arms. "Stop it."

She hissed and her eyes got shinier, and one of the arms came out, swiping at him. Tony ducked backward, away from the attempt, and grabbed her hand. She reached around and tried to swipe with the other one, and he grabbed it, too, holding her down into the corner with all his strength. She was very strong, much stronger than he'd expected.

What had she said, she didn't remember killing the raider? _Unless she had to._ Unless she was threatened? "I am not a threat, Phoebe," he said. "I am Tony Sellers, and I am going to help you. I am not going to hurt you."

She kept the pressure for a moment longer, and then she went limp. Tony fell forward and caught himself with a shoulder jammed into the wall. He didn't let go of her hands. "Phoebe," he said, "are you okay?"

She shivered a little. "I think so," she muttered.

"Oh, that's _precious,_ " a voice said, from the doorway, and Tony turned his head.

"I meant what I said, Josephine," he said. He didn't move. Phoebe had a grip on him, still. His face was very near her ears, and he sighed. "Let go, Phoebe."

She uncurled her fingers, and Tony pushed himself up, retrieving his shirt. He tossed it back to Phoebe, and walked to the doorway.

"Hey, I came by because Dog told me to say sorry," she said. "And that we'll escort you out of the Metro, if you want." She leaned on the frame and crossed her arms. "Since, you know, you're such a poor loser."

"I highly doubt your boyfriend is that long-winded," Tony said, and grabbed the door. "Get out, Josephine."

"I'll come back in twenty minutes," she said, meanly. "Or should I make that ten?"

Tony slammed the door in her face and he could have sworn he heard the ghoul chuckling in the hallway.


	4. Crying Tony

"So tell me, Blacksmith," the guttural voice came across the desk, "why you decided it was not _important_ to put a tracking device into a sexually mature human-deathclaw hybrid?"

Blacksmith Hubbard hung his head. He knew why. The girl―she was so damn scared, all the time. He could barely bring himself to operate on her, and when she'd escaped he was actually glad. "First Iron, I―"

"There is no excuse for this," the First Iron said. "We may never see her again, and you of all people should know how much that puts us at risk. Not just from the outside world―" The First Iron pushed a button and opened the shutter overlooking T-Division, and stood at the window, staring down into the courtyard. A few residents of the compound were out and about, working under the faint rise of the sun. "It sets us back by almost one hundred years, one hundred years of never-ending research and hard work."

"I am aware, sir," Hubbard said. He nervously paced in place, his toenails clicking on the metal floor. "Sir, your daughter was vehemently opposed to any more surgeries after that last one―"

"And you improperly sedated her, giving her ample chance to murder the cryo crew, break a hole through the outer fence, and escape the compound." First Iron Falconbridge brought his hand up and slammed it into the window, effecting a loud bang. Hubbard startled a little. "She is _not_ a fluke, Blacksmith," the leader of T-Division said. "She is perfect."

Hubbard stood, silently. She was perfect-the perfect mixture of human and deathclaw DNA, capable of providing eggs, to be collected and matured by the cryogenics laboratory. Perfect in that she was able to be controlled, up to a point, and that she was... absolutely a gentle and fearful creature. Hubbard pushed his own feelings aside, and stared at Falconbridge. The old man was gray, like Phoebe, but his head was bald, and small curling horns jutted from the side above where his ears ought to be. Hubbard knew the man had a face very like a deathclaw. He wore a military-style suit, gray trimmed with bright red cord. Hubbard was smaller, darker, and did not have the benefit of Falconbridge, because he had been bred a beta member. _He_ was mostly human. The First Iron was not.

"I apologize for any mistakes I have made," Hubbard snivelled.

"You will be dead before tomorrow morning," Falconbridge said. "I allowed you to live this long because you were useful, but that has ended with your ineffective excuses. Appoint a successor to your position and report to the courtyard when you are ready."

Hubbard's heart sank and he scuttled away, moving through the endless hallways of T-Division.

* * *

Bitch and Dog waited for a long time before Tony came out of the bathroom with the girl, awkwardly carrying her on his back. She'd fallen asleep, and he carefully laid her out on the bed inside their "home" at Dog's request. Bitch sat at the table and nursed a soda, watching Tony.

"You don't gotta be mean to me," she told him, when he slid into the chair opposite her. "I'm not trying to be mean to you."

"I doubt that very much," he said, and shot her a glare.

"How is that eye?" she asked him, brightly. "You look worn out. I like the eye patch, though."

" _Dammit,_ Josephine!" he yelled, and slammed his hand onto the table. Dog looked over the fencing at them and growled a little.

"Hey, Tony, I'm trying to make conversation," she said. "I didn't make Alexy bash your head in. I certainly didn't need you to come rescue me, then. I _did_ say thank you, you know."

Tony grumbled a little. "I'm tired of this," he said. "I really am."

"I hope you let go of whatever it was, you were holding onto," she added. "Because you know full well that I am never going home."

"Just―" he laid a hand on his good eye and shook his head. "Can we just _drop_ that?"

Bitch smiled. "Sure, Tony. What's up with this girl?" She pointed at the girl, curled up on the bed. "Why is she gray? Radiation?"

"I don't know, and she's from Three-Mountain," he answered. "Trying to convince her to go home, so I can collect the bounty."

Bitch studied the girl for a moment. "That place..." She'd heard rumors, but that was all; no one got near Three-Mountain without being shot at or killed. "Supposed to be some sort of weird commune up there."

Dog grunted and a creaking noise echoed through the tunnel. "Stay away," he warned. "Danger."

"Yeah, I wouldn't go anywhere near it, if I were you," she said, and rubbed her neck again. Damn Dog, always getting her riled up! She grinned to herself. _Just wait till these two are gone,_ she thought.

Tony shook his head. "This job pays too well."

"Shit, it can't pay well enough to risk your life with those weirdos," Bitch laughed. "Nothing pays _that_ well."

"This one does. Besides, I only came out this far because I was trying to get away from Gladstone." Tony looked away from her. "Everywhere I go, I get reminded of how useless I am."

"Oh, _Tony,_ " she said, and reached forward to grab his shoulder. She sighed internally. He looked so damn miserable, and she knew it was her fault, but she couldn't change who she was... She shot at look at Dog and her face twitched. Not when who she _was_ , had turned out so _great._ "You are absolutely, one hundred percent, not useless," she told Tony. Dog grumbled a little. Bitch looked over her shoulder at him again. He was making a threatening noise in his throat.

She left him, huddled into himself, having a pity party, and climbed the edge of the fence to lean out toward Dog. "What is it?" she whispered.

"Someone coming," he answered, and held his rebar club ready.

"Oh, _good,_ " she laughed, quietly. "I could go for a smashing." She climbed down and tapped Tony on the shoulder. "Hey, company's coming."

Tony sat up and pulled out his rifle, shot a glance at the girl, and stepped out of the fencing. She stood beside him, grinning under her mask. Bitch, Dog, and Tony stood at attention, watching the tunnel. After a moment, the unmistakable sounds of walking came to their ears.

" _Stop right there!_ " Bitch yelled, and held up her rifle. "Identify yourselves!"

Tony grumbled something about her not doing that for him, and she rolled her eyes. "Shut the hell up," she whispered. "I can't catch them all, and Dog _was_ asleep."

"Killarney and crew!" came the response. "Looking for Phoebe Falconbridge!"

Tony swore. Bitch grinned. "What do you think the odds are, that the girl is worth killing us?"

" _Entirely_ too high," Tony hissed at her, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown. He shot a glance at Bitch. "She's worth five thousand."

Bitch made a startled noise and her head swiveled around. "Shit! Really?" She gaped at the creature laying on her bed. "...Maybe she's somebody's science project. Remember that―?"

Dog growled loudly, pride in his tone. Tony nodded, he recalled the monster in St. James. "Maybe. Either way, it's worth killing us for."

"I'm afraid you boys are a little too late," Bitch called out, through the tunnel. Three figures stood in the near-darkness at the end. "She's already in custody."

"And who are _you?_ " came the answer.

Bitch snickered. "We're just a bitch, a dog, and a lost little puppy!" Tony shot her a wilting glare. "I meant the _girl,_ stupid," she muttered at him. "Calm down."

"Well, ma'am," Killarney yelled out, "I am going to have to ask you to give up your quarry, because we intend to collect the bounty."

"Fuck you!" Bitch yelled back, and brought her rifle up. "I've been killing cocksure bastards like you for the last _year_ and I ain't been killed _yet!_ "

Dog laughed, and the sound echoed out through the tunnel. "Bitch don't miss!" he hollered out.

A shot went over their heads, and Tony and Bitch aimed their rifles, shooting down the tunnel at the figures. Killarney and crew scattered among the rubble, taking cover where it was available. Tony ducked behind the fencing and motioned Bitch and Dog out. "I'll stay here," he said.

Dog was already flying down the tunnel. Bitch crouched and pointed her rifle, taking shots at the bend of the tunnel where a merc was hiding. A shot tore through her leather at her knee, and she grunted in pain. Dog roared, and the unmistakable sound of a head being squished came over the air.

"Don't want to have to kill you!" she yelled, reloading. "You're bringing this on yourselves!"

"You have no idea what that girl is _worth!_ " Killarney shouted.

"I think I have a decent idea," Bitch muttered, and lined up her shot. She exhaled, slowly, and pulled the trigger.

A bullet tore into her chest, then, and she fell to the ground, in pain.

* * *

Phoebe woke up to gunfire and shouting. She bolted upright and looked around, then found herself clinging to Tony's side, while he peered around the fence. Bitch was crouching just outside the fence, shooting her rifle down the tunnel. Dog was nowhere to be seen, but she could hear him growling, smell his ghoul-smell. She also smelled the weird stink of home, further down the tunnel.

She―

 _Long, brightly lit hallways, the lights moving in her vision, she was being pushed on a gurney. Voices speaking in the vast emptiness of her head._

"This is of utmost importance."

"Yes, First Iron."

"Phoebe, you have been given a great responsibility."

"Yes, Father..."

 _Phoebe saw the gurney wheeling into a room, and saw―the Blacksmith, his eyes sad, giving her an injection―and she was asleep for a time, but she woke up when she heard the scrape of metal on metal, a scalpel poised above her stomach._

She'd _killed_ them. She'd _killed_ them all.

A sick feeling welled up in her stomach and she coughed, the bile in her mouth splattering onto the ground.

"Phoebe!" he was yelling. Then he cried out in pain, and she saw blood arcing through the darkness of the Metro.

* * *

Marcelo, who _refused_ to answer to that stupid fucking nickname that the Bitch had given him, spun his head around as he heard her cry out in pain. It made him angry, all right, but she knew the risks just as well as he did, staking out stupid assholes down in the Metro. There was a very good reason he refused to call her by her given name.

Her becoming injured was just another excuse for him to beat the ever-loving piss out of the assholes. He grinned, and his club grew lighter in his hands as he swung it around and down, knocking one of the mercs into the wall. The blood that coated the wall was satisfying, but he needed more.

He looked around, quickly, and his club moved with him to bash the leader of the mercs into a pulp. This one was wily, though, and like the smoothskin who had wanted his Bitch, he ducked around the club.

But Marcelo was ready, this time. He pushed himself forward into the man, headbutting him and knocking him back. The man stumbled and did not fall―how many mercs had Marcelo met that were so fucking tough? He growled in frustration, and pushed his club onto the man's chest, shoving him to the floor, pinning his hands under the rifle he carried.

The merc pulled the trigger, emptying his magazine. Marcelo felt the rounds passing through his legs, and heard the cry from behind him, and shrugged. _Shit happens._ He pushed downwards on the club, grinding the man into the floor, and laughed a little at the face the man was making. _Stupid fucking mercs._

A different sound echoed in the tunnel, a shriek of rage and pain and some unidentifiable guttural sound. He felt, rather than heard, the footfalls, heavy and fast, and instinctively he ducked to the side.

The girl―Tony's objective―flung herself at the mercenary, and began to rip him apart with her hands. Marcelo, after watching for a moment, leaned on his club and watched, his mouth twitching up into a vague smile.

She _was_ a monster, after all. Like him. He liked that.

Blood flew and she made terrible noises, and Marcelo watched as the mercenary went from one solid piece of flesh into ribbons of pale skin and streams of red. The girl tore him limb from limb, ripping through his tendons and breaking bones.

Marcelo pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and waited. He glanced at the Bitch, once, and saw her rising from the ground, heard her low curses over the air. He nodded. She was tough enough. He looked back to the girl, and saw her slowing.

"Tony?" The Bitch grunted in pain. "Oh, _goddamn_ it! Dog!"

Marcelo ignored her. She knew better. He wasn't a goddamn dog, but she sure as hell was a goddamn _bitch._

" _Seriously?!_ " She grunted in effort and he heard buckles being undone. "Marcelo, Tony's bleeding out!"

Marcelo tossed the cigarette away, put his club on his shoulder, and ambled back to the fencing.

* * *

When he woke the first thing he noticed was a glint of metal sticking out of his chest, the double finger holds of a stimpak catching his eye. It moved with him, jammed into his muscle, and he was momentarily confused, because there was another one jammed into his chest on the other side, and a large amount of blood shining in the bright and haloed light of a lamp on the table.

Everything else was blurry or dark. Tony moved his hand up to his chest and paused. His face was wet, and his eye patch was gone. He jerked, impatiently, trying to sit up.

"Stop," Josephine said, and laid a bare hand on his collarbone.

" _Where is my_ ―"

"Had to take it off," Josephine said, removing her hand. "Let it rest, Tony, it's not that bad."

"I _want_ it," he said, angrily. "Give _me back my goddamn eye patch._ "

"No," she said, and her voice was rough. "No. Listen to me―"

Tony sat upright and heard the rattle of an I.V. stand, blinked bleary eyes at the people around him. Marcelo was standing behind Josephine, sewing up a wound on her back with surprising dexterity. Phoebe―Tony clapped his hand to his eye and closed it under his fingers. Phoebe was sitting on the bed near his feet, rocking back and forth, covered in blood. She was mumbling to herself.

He touched the stimpak stuck into his chest with his other hand, and tested it. It didn't want to come out of the flesh― _fuck, that hurt!_ He grumbled.

"Had to stick you fast," Marcelo rasped, from the darkness behind Josephine. "Sorry about that."

Tony yanked on the right side and pulled it from his chest, then ripped the other one out. Two bleeding trails erupted from his skin, slowly oozing to a stop. He felt the scar where the bullet had gone into his chest, on the right side, a through and through of his lung. _Stimpaks,_ he thought. Something he wished he could afford, more often, even if he hated to use them.

Phoebe kept mumbling, rocking herself, her arms wrapped around her chest. Tony shot a glance at Josephine. She shrugged. "She's been doing that for a while," she said. "After she, uh..." Josephine looked up at Marcelo.

"She killed the merc leader," he stated. "Tore him to pieces. I _like_ her." He smiled.

Tony sighed. "Phoebe," he said, moving his legs off the bed.

"Imamonster," she mumbled. "Killthemall. Monsterkillthem. _Imamonster_."

"So what?" Tony asked, irritated. "Everyone has to kill. It's how it works, out here." She didn't respond. Tony moved off the bed. "Where _the hell_ is _my goddamn eye patch,_ Josephine."

She grumbled, and Marcelo made a noise, from behind her. "I'm not giving it back just yet," she said. "You have very nice eyes, Tony. Even if you can't stop crying."

Tony's hand twitched. _No!_ He stopped himself. He wouldn't hit her. That― _Marcelo_ did that. That was something Tony _did not do._ He curled his lip and glared at her with every ounce of hate he had.

" _Jesuchristo,_ " Marcelo muttered. "Let him be, Bitch." He pulled the eye patch from her back pocket and tossed it to Tony.

Tony caught it, and stared at it. His hand shook in anger. Phoebe kept muttering to herself. The room was cold, and he―he just couldn't take it anymore. Now he was having to stop himself from hitting Josephine, the fucking love of his life. Was it _worth_ ―

"I'm going for a walk," he announced, sullenly. "Please take care of Phoebe."


	5. 15,000 caps!

"Bitch," Dog said, "you pushed too much."

Bitch looked up at her ghoul, his hand on her shoulder. She touched him, gently, for a moment, and smiled. "He'll be okay, Dog," she said.

"Don't fucking call me that," Dog said, removing his hand. "I'm not a _goddamn_ _dog_."

"So I'm a bitch, then? That's why you call me that?" She turned on him. "You want me to call you Ghoul, or Motherfucking _Bastard_ , instead?"

He slapped her. Not a punch, or a smack, or anything like that, but a slap meant to wipe the words from her mouth. She was stunned, for a moment. "Go after him," Marcelo ordered.

"Why do you keep making me talk to Tony―"

Marcelo rumbled at her, and it wasn't his normal "I'll eat you alive" rumble that she'd come to love. It was flat-out angry. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and darted off down the tunnel after Tony.

"Leave me alone," he said, when she finally caught up to him. He was sitting against the wall, in a dark spot away from the dim Metro lights, his feet out in front of him. He had his .44 in his hand and was staring at it, and he was actually crying now. He hadn't replaced his eye patch yet.

"Tony..." she stifled the emotion that rose to her chest. " _Please._ "

"I'm done for, Josephine," he said, his voice wobbling. "I really can't."

She crouched by him, put her hand on the gun, and held it firm against his leg. "Do you remember when J.L. died?" He looked up at her, his eyes filled with pain. "You remember how Mom wanted to kill herself, too, but she couldn't, because she'd leave me all on my own?"

"Your mother never intended to actually kill herself," he mumbled. "She said that because she'd just lost her husband and her son." He wiped his nose with his free hand.

"How was I supposed to know that? I was fourteen, Tony. Life at that age is very dramatic." She rolled her eyes and snorted. "At the time, I thought I was gonna lose everyone, all at once, and you know what I did. I started running off to St. James, getting into trouble, being a pest."

He just stared at Bitch, crying silently. "Look, Tony, I _do_ love you―" she swallowed hard. "But I can't love you like you want me to, and I think you've been running off to your own St. James, trying to escape that."

"Where's my Marcelo, then?" he asked, and she burst into tears.

"I know I did you wrong, I _know_ ," she blubbered, and wiped her face awkwardly. "I'm sorry, I really _am_. Marcelo calls me Bitch for a reason, you know? I can't change who I am―"

"Leave me alone, Josephine," he said, again, very quietly. "Take Phoebe home. Tell my family I love them." His hand twitched under hers.

"You're gonna leave her?" Bitch asked him, incredulously. "Just drop her like a hot rock, after you promised you would help her?"

"How am I going to help anyone," he muttered, and looked off to the side, "if I can't even help myself?"

That made her mad, because she'd never known him to consciously act helpless, even when he was half-dead and bleeding profusely. "You help her, _first,_ and then you can kill yourself all you fucking want, Tony!" Bitch slapped him upside the head, and disarmed him in one swoop. "Because if you don't finish the job, you don't get to get paid!"

He stared at her, now, his face glistening.

"And if―if getting paid means you blow your fucking _brains_ out, then by all means, you do so―but Tony Sellers is _not_ the kind of person who lets a girl, who can barely stop from crying, alone in a dark tunnel with monsters like me and Marcelo!" She stood, and stared down at him.

It was deathly silent for a moment, and all she could hear was the ragged breaths he was drawing, deep into his chest. She fiddled with the .44, nervously.

Tony sighed, and looked down at his hands. "Why do you always know what to say," he muttered.

"I don't know, Tony." She held out her hand to him. "Maybe it's because you always want to listen."

* * *

Phoebe calmed down after Tony left, and after Bitch was gone, left alone with the ghoul. He had removed his mask and was scratching at the skin under his lone patch of hair. She watched him, her eyes on his hands so mangled-looking and rough. She looked at her hands, and she didn't see much difference in the two of them. She was a monster, and so was he.

"The trick is not to show it," he said, and she jerked her head up at him. He was looking at her, curiously. "Not to let people see anything but the monster. Then, when they accept you for who you are, it's not as painful."

His words were fluid and eloquent to her. "How do you know?" she murmured.

"Because the bitch loves me," he answered. "Even though I'm a monster."

"I can't do that," she said. "I―I didn't even know I was a monster until―" And how did she know what ghouls were, anyway? The thought hadn't occurred to her, as of yet.

Dog laughed, meanly. "Girl, I was a monster _before_ ," he said. "You..." He eyed her. "You were made one. It's not your fault."

She sniffled a little, and wiped her mouth. Blood smeared across her arm. "I can't control it, though."

"That's the part that is the monster," he said, and handed her a bottle of water. She stared at it.

"Where's Tony?" she whispered. She had been waiting for him to wake up, the whole time, and he'd run off.

Dog sighed, and the sound was alien in the emptiness of the tunnel. "Bitch got him riled up," he muttered. "We'll see if he comes back."

Phoebe waited, patiently. After a few minutes, Bitch came back with Tony trailing behind her, both puffy eyed and slightly angry looking. Bitch grinned at Dog. "You," she said, "are the _worst._ "

Tony sat back down on the bed, next to Phoebe, and replaced his eye patch, then turned to look at her. "Do you want to go home?" he asked her.

She sputtered. " _N-no!_ " she said and balled her fists into her face. "They made me like― _this!_ " _I won't go back―if they just want to cause me pain―_

"Alright, then," he replied. "I am not staying here with these two, though." He shot them a glance. Bitch disentangled herself surreptitiously from Dog's chest and rolled her eyes.

Phoebe looked at Tony over her hands and saw how tired he was, and felt bad. "Maybe―" she stopped herself.

"You _got_ to learn how to be more assertive," Bitch said. "Tony's bad enough at the quiet act, on his own."

Tony chuckled, but it wasn't a happy laugh. "Every damn word," he said.

"I'm not leaving your side, this time," Bitch said. "I can't let you do something stupid again."

"Alright," Tony said. "I'll wait to kill myself, but I'm not going to be happy about that."

Phoebe reached out and touched Tony's hair, patted it. She vaguely recalled someone― _the Blacksmith, maybe?_ ―doing that for her, when she felt sad. Why would he want to kill himself? "We'll just be quiet, then," she said, and the words sounded right.

"Oh, she's perfect," Bitch muttered, and resumed her embrace with Dog.

Phoebe ignored the woman; she was making words that made Tony mad, and that made Phoebe mad, too. He was obviously hurting―and Phoebe didn't want to cause hurt. Tony stared at the floor, not talking. She wanted to say something to make him feel better, but didn't know how to say it.

"Can we go to your home?" Phoebe asked him, instead.

* * *

The moment had passed. In a way, he was glad, because he really hadn't anticipated ending his own life in a dank Metro tunnel under Northern Michigan. And he felt ashamed, too, because he hadn't thought about the girl, or his family, when he decided to do it. Tony felt his feet moving one after another, in front of him, and didn't pay attention to the landscape.

Josephine had taken charge, and was leading him a long way around the shore of the lake. Marcelo took up the end of their parade of shit and sad feet, carrying his rebar club on his shoulder. Josephine dressed Phoebe from head to toe in leather and black fabric, covering as much skin as she could; she reasoned that if they were going to spirit her away from Three-Mountain, that they needed to hide her in plain sight. With the ghoul and the two girls wearing black armor and face masks, it looked like they were escorting Tony.

Probably were. Tony's chest was sore from pain, both physical and emotional. He had endured a great deal of physical pain in his life, not ending with the half-smile that Alexy Ilyin had given him, but he was scored more deeply by his own emotions.

He didn't say a word, the whole trip. Phoebe didn't say much, and she kept shooting him glances, trying to catch his attention, maybe. He barely noticed her. He barely noticed any of the creatures they ran across, either, but he did note that Marcelo could kill a yao guai in less than ten seconds with his rebar club.

It only made him feel more useless. He was not strong. He was not smart. He was not worth anything.

And in the night, when Josephine and Marcelo would duck off into the wastes for an hour, probably to do what he himself had wanted to do with Josephine since she was old enough to know better―he tried to keep his composure, but it was just too hard.

He sat in camp, holding his rifle, and his fingers ached. His tongue hadn't healed, because he kept biting into it. Why couldn't he get over that stupid b―Tony closed his eyes. He didn't know why. He wasn't going to degrade her, just because she hurt him. Everything hurt, like Phoebe had said.

She seemed happier, away from the Metro and out in the open. She was honestly surprised by everything they came across, all the creatures in the wastes, the people that they met, the landscape, even. She never voiced it but she was delighted by it, in her mannerisms. Tony started feeling the pain in his head dull and started noticing her more.

Objective. Why they were traveling back to Gladstone, he couldn't say. He rightly ought to be taking her home, back to Three-Mountain, but she was just as scared of that as she was of the yao guai that rambled through the mountains. Tony sighed.

He broke his silence when they were on the highway. "Phoebe." She jerked at the sound. "Are you in pain?" he asked. He'd noticed her clutching at her lower abdomen for the past day.

The wind swept over the camp, spattering them with dust. The sky was clear, deep, and dark. A stand of dead trees was behind them, curved around to cover most of their activity, and the open entrance overlooked the highway. Tony shifted his feet under him, hearing the scrape against the dirt.

"A little," she said. She ran a hand along her stomach. "It feels like I ate a rock."

"What?" Josephine laughed. "C'mere." She stood and met the girl halfway. Her hand ran across Phoebe's stomach. "Oh." Josephine turned her head to Tony. " _Tony._ "

Her voice was indicative of danger. He pulled himself up and moved to the two. "What?" he asked.

Josephine's voice came quiet and muffled through the hood. "She needs medical help," she said. "There's a hard lump in her abdomen."

"Are you pregnant, Phoebe?" he asked her, roughly.

"What?" Phoebe looked down, at her stomach. "I don't―"

"Did you have sex with someone, recently?" he asked, even though it made his voice wobble in embarrassment. Goddamn Josephine and Marcelo. He didn't want that image in his head.

"What?" she said, baffled. She looked from one to the other.

" _Jesuchristo,_ " Josephine swore, and Marcelo grunted.

Everyone was silent. Then, Marcelo laughed, and Josephine turned her head roughly, removing her hand from the girl's lower stomach. "Shut up, Dog," she growled. "It's not funny."

"Three-Mountain," he rasped, and threw his hands up, laying himself back onto a rock. "Goddamn commune." The ghoul made a thoughtful noise, and was still.

"We will take you to a doctor," Tony said. "If it hurts, we'll find you some medicine."

Phoebe nodded at him, and held her stomach. Josephine dragged Tony off to the side to have a conversation, and pulled her hood off. "What the _hell_ ―"

"I don't know, either, Josephine," he said. "But whatever it is, we are not suited to deal with it."

"She's so innocent. Like someone kept her in a damn tower her whole life." The dark-colored woman shot the girl a glance. "This is too much trouble, even for us, you know."

"I am aware," Tony said, bitterly, "but I'm already looking to die, and you came because you got bored of killing raiders. Don't go lecturing me about trouble."

Josephine gave him a scathing glance. "Don't get started on that, again. Let's take her to Uncle Amos. If anyone would know what to do, it would be him." She shot another look at the girl, then turned to Tony with a knowing grin. "You ready for a lecture?"

Tony snorted. "Are _you?_ "

And she just laughed, and went to Marcelo.

* * *

Tony was gone for over a month. In that time, two more couriers came to ARC headquarters and dropped off an adjusted price for the objective that Tony was after. Amos sat in the office and chewed on a pencil, looking down at the latest update, and he worried.

He worried that Tony was dead, mostly, but he also worried that if Tony had managed to complete the job―and he knew Tony would do his best, and Tony was good at what he did―then ARC would suddenly be insanely rich and subject to revenge by other merc groups out in the wastes. He'd already made contact with Saloman and his crew; they were looking for the girl just as hard as Tony was, and Amos knew Saloman would put a bullet in his nephew without thinking, for this bounty.

 _15,000 caps!_

Three-Mountain wanted the girl, badly. Amos sifted through his memories of the area north of Gladstone. There was that ghoul city up there, the Republic, and a few smaller towns with rough people living in it. There was the stretch of land he called The Fingers, hopefully Tony hadn't gone overland there. Too much radiation.

There were Metro stations all over, but defunct for the most part. And there was the Three-Mountain area, the town walled off to the world. No one could say what went on in there, no one had ever gone near, usually people got shot. Or just disappeared.

He sighed. He should not have baited Tony with the job. Tony wasn't thinking straight. It was Amos' fault that he was even out there, and now... If Tony died, Sue would kill him.

But he probably deserved it, he thought.

Avery yawned. "I miss getting out there and being shot at," he moaned.

"Really?" Amos turned his eye to his twin brother. "You miss me having to dig bullets out of your backside, when you inevitably run away from the fight?"

Avery snorted. " _Once._ That happened once. And you keep bringing it up―"

"I'm worried, Avery," he interrupted. "Tony is going to get himself killed, if he hasn't already."

Avery was quiet. "Yeah," he agreed. "But we can't very well tell him to sit down and shut up, now can we?"

"Maybe if he was more respectful of our opinions... If he makes it home, I'm going to fire him." Amos laid his hand down on the desk and imagined the man's response.

Avery clucked his tongue. "That'd make it worse, Amos. The boy needs something to occupy him other than his job and a sassy girl."

"One particular sassy girl," Amos said, ruefully, "would be all he wants, but who knows where Josephine is?"

"Amos!" Jesse ran into the room, and put his hands on his knees, breathing hard.

"Sue on you, again?" Avery asked, smiling.

Jesse stood up and fixed his older brothers with a mean look. "That's my business, _thank you,_ " he said. "Hey, no, uh, my idiot son is on the way down from the north with three people in black armor. Lindsay, in the north post, sent a runner down."

Amos thought for a moment. "No other markings?"

"No, just black armor and hunting rifles." Jesse exhaled loudly. "Black hoods, too. Sounded like raiders to me, but―"

"But raiders don't escort people," Amos finished for him. "I see your concern. Gear up, Avery. We'll get you shot in the backside, yet."

Avery grumbled and groaned, but eased his fifty-year-old backside from the chair and went to retrieve his power armor.


	6. Temper

"I like your rifle," Phoebe was saying. "You take good care of it."

She was trying to talk to Tony again. Marcelo shook his head. The merc was off the end of his line, swimming against the rapids, and hitting every rock on the way. He blamed the Bitch, and rightfully so, but he wasn't going to give up the Bitch just because some mopey merc decided he couldn't live without her. She was too much fun.

He grinned, and ran a hand down her back, grabbing her hip possessively. The Bitch elbowed him off of her, standing with one foot up on a rock, staring over the sights of her rifle down into a dip of the land. The group had stopped to take a break and let Tony prepare to face down his uncle. Marcelo understood that he had gone against orders, bringing the girl back to Gladstone. He didn't care. Wasn't his business; his business was the Bitch.

He laid his hand back on her hip and pulled her to him, grunting. " _Stop,_ " she hissed. "You'll set Tony off."

"That bomb already blew," he rasped into her ear, through the hood.

"Doesn't mean I want to keep lighting it," she muttered back, and stifled a small moan as he dug his fingers into her flesh. "Stooooop."

She was going to get it, later. For now, Marcelo just stood back and admired her ass and how it filled out her black leather pants. He grinned, in anticipation.

* * *

Three power armored men were walking up the road toward them and Phoebe's eye began to twitch from stress. Tony and Bitch told him that the man they were looking for―Amos Royce―was a good man, and would not hurt her. But the way they were acting, it seemed like they were afraid of him, and she wondered if she ought to be, as well.

Bitch was muttering at Dog, who kept grabbing her hips and making breathy noises. Tony's hands were shaking, and he put one of them over his good eye, mouthing words into the air. She didn't understand.

"Are you upset?" she asked him. He hadn't talked much, not since that night when he asked about her stomach. "Can I help you?"

"No," he said. "I'm beyond help, Phoebe."

"Not even Amos?" she asked, uncertainly.

Tony burbled out a laugh and shook his head. "It's complicated," he said. "I don't know if you'd really understand. I don't know that I even understand."

"Is it Bitch?" she asked, shooting the woman a glance. "Is she making you feel this way?"

"Yes," he said, through gritted teeth.

"...You want me to hurt her?" she asked. She remembered the bathroom where he'd allowed her to hurt him, to dig out the bullet. He had been a lot more calm, then.

Tony barked out a laugh and surprised everyone. Bitch and Dog turned their heads sharply and Phoebe recoiled like she'd been hit. "No, Phoebe," he said, turning to her and removing his hand from his eye. "You don't need to do _that._ "

"Amos is down there, let's go say hi," Bitch said. "Phoebe, uh... Call me Joey, okay? I don't need a lecture about my name."

They walked down and stood on the road, two hills on either side of them blocking the view of the rest of the wastes, and looked down the way toward the three large people walking toward them. Phoebe had never seen power armor before, and Bit―Joey had explained it to her.

"Tony," the one in the middle said.

"Uncle Amos," he replied.

"Who are your new friends?"

"Aw, hell, Uncle Amos," Joey said. "You can't have forgotten _me_."

Amos was quiet. The man to his left swore, and the one to the right gripped his weapon tightly. Phoebe looked at Tony through the goggles on her mask. He looked tired. She wished she could help.

"Josephine," Amos said. "And Marcelo." He turned his head to the big man. "Who is this?" he gestured to Phoebe.

"Phoebe Falconbridge," Tony muttered.

Amos regarded her for a moment. She felt embarrassed, all of a sudden, even though she couldn't see his face. "And why did you bring her here, instead of completing the job?" Amos asked, and his voice was bereft of all amicable intent.

"She refuses to go home," was all Tony said.

Amos sighed. "Tony, you have to return her to Three-Mountain," he said. "Or let her go herself. The bounty went up, while you were out. She's too much danger to us."

Phoebe shuddered. She didn't want to go home. Never, ever, go home. It hurt her head just thinking about it, remembering how she'd killed people―her stomach ached, and quivered around the rock-hard lump in there. She should just go away―

"What is the bounty, now?" Joey asked.

"Fifteen thousand," Amos said. "An ungodly sum. Turn around and take her back. Now."

Joey and Marcelo both registered surprise, but Tony just crooked a small smile at Amos and shook his head. Phoebe felt herself start to shake, and she couldn't control it. She didn't want to―

"No," Tony said. "She doesn't want to go home."

* * *

Now the man was temping fate? Amos shot glances at Josephine, and Marcelo. They stood solid with the girl and Tony, not moving. Marcelo's rebar was splattered with blood, and Josephine was more muscled than he recalled, before. Tony looked like a heap of brown leather tossed to the corner, his shoulders drooping, face sad.

"Anthony," Jesse said. "I know you might think you should help her―"

 _My fault, too,_ Amos thought, _for teaching the man that being a good person has reward._

"―But this is going to get us all killed. And believe you me, I do not want to die any time soon."

Tony shrugged. "I'm already dead," he muttered.

Amos sighed. "Josephine―" he started.

"Hey, I said my piece," she snapped. " _And_ I stopped this stupid asshole from shooting himself in the head, already. I'm doing my best."

"Don't swear, Josephine," Amos said, automatically. He was very close to losing his temper, and took a deep breath. "That true, Tony?" Tony looked away from him, to the left, and Amos couldn't see his face. " _Tony!_ "

Jesse sighed. "Dammit, Anthony," he muttered. Amos knew what Jesse was thinking.

Avery cleared his throat. "Whatever is going on―" he lowered his rifle to the road. "Tony, you have to go home. Joey, you and Marcelo, take the girl back to Three-Mountain."

Phoebe stepped behind Tony, but her head was still visible over the man. Josephine laughed, and Marcelo gripped his club a little harder. "I don't think you understand," Josephine said. "I'll try to lay this out for you." She pulled Phoebe's hood off, with a quick motion. "Phoebe is _different._ "

Amos thought the girl looked normal enough; she was gray-colored, though, more so than would be considered normal, and when she pushed her ash-blonde hair out of her face from the abrupt hood removal, she had very pronounced cheekbones, and gray eyes.

Tony elbowed Josephine, hard, and grabbed the hood back, handing it to Phoebe. The action contained unspoken words to Amos, who knew exactly how Tony acted about his own headpiece. Amos narrowed his eyes. Perhaps that was why Tony had brought her back. Some kind of kindred spirit related to their respective appearances.

"She also needs medical attention," Josephine was saying. "Some kind of tumor in her stomach. I think, anyway."

"Is it a tumor," Jesse asked, "or is it something else?" Amos grimaced to himself. Jesse always did have a soft spot for the troubled ones.

Marcelo rumbled out a laugh, and the ARC men looked at him. They were aware that Marcelo didn't speak unless he felt it was necessary. This, unfortunately for his audience, made him an object of utmost attention. "She's definitely carrying," he said. "Something surprising."

"...How surprising?" Josephine asked. "And how do you know?"

The ghoul turned his covered head to her. "Been alive a long time," he said. "Been all over. Girl looks like a deathclaw. Deathclaw have eggs."

" _Eggs?_ " Josephine breathed.

"What the fuck is a deathclaw?" Jesse asked.

"A monster," Marcelo said. "Stronger, tougher, meaner than Marcelo."

"Well, shit, don't want to meet one of those," Jesse muttered.

Amos held up a hand. "Regardless of what's going on―" he started to say, and then lost his words. His temper broke. " _Goddamn it,_ Jesse! I told you to keep your son at _home!_ "

Jesse protested, and Avery jumped into the fray, and Josephine, too. The four argued between themselves while Marcelo, Tony, and Phoebe watched in silence.

"Amos, you know full well I can't control a grown-ass adult!" Jesse said. "Even if it _is_ my son!"

"Amos," Avery said, moving forward, "it's not _Jesse's_ fault―"

Josephine laughed stupidly. "Yeah, it's _Tony's_ fucking fault―"

Amos growled and placed a hand on Josephine's shoulder, shaking her a little. "You―"

Marcelo bounced the ARC man. Amos found himself sprawling on his behind, on the road. Avery raised his weapon on the ghoul, and Jesse scoffed. Josephine pushed past Marcelo. "Look, Uncle Amos," she said. "I'm here to help Tony, not to get my ass handed to me. Phoebe doesn't want to go home because those creepy fuckers in Three-Mountain made her a monster, and Tony isn't going to take her home, so neither will I." She stared down at him. "And I suggest you never lay a hand on me, _ever_ again, even if you think you're going to save my life."

Marcelo growled in response. Amos sighed, and sat on the road. He'd never laid a hand on a woman in his entire life, like that. He felt disgusted with himself, for both losing his temper, and doing something so reprehensible. He also felt that he understood why Tony was in such a bad way, over Josephine. She was the spark, they were the explosives. "We're going to get killed," he said.

"Everybody dies," Marcelo said.

"Yeah, but I'm not everybody," Amos muttered, and pushed himself up off the ground.

* * *

Tony had climbed up to the roof of the Sellers' house and was sitting with his feet dangling over the edge, looking out over the lake. For a moment, he had considered shooting himself, on the roof, where no one would be able to see him right away, especially in the darkness of the new moon. But the moment had passed, just as it had before.

Phoebe had refused to leave his side, mostly because she was uncomfortable with all the tension between ARC and the young people. She'd made it clear she wasn't going anywhere without Tony. She was sitting to his left, her hands in her lap, and she was staring at him. He wished she would go away, but he didn't know where she could go that would help her. ARC could not, and she was dangerous in more ways than one. He would have to leave home again, and go out into the wastes with her, and get himself killed trying to protect her from the competing mercenaries.

 _That isn't a bad thought,_ he thought. He'd still be dying on the job.

"Tony?"

He ignored her, and stared out at the lake. He was thinking about St. James, about shooting Alexy Ilyin, about Josephine mooning over that fucking ghoul. About his eye, and how his tear duct was injured and no longer worked correctly, for all that Dr. Donald had done for him. About his cheek, and about Josephine going away, and about himself trying to find her again.

"Tony?"

He thought about how he'd tracked the two as far as Spalding and had been roughly drawn home by his father, about being forced to stay at home, about his anger at his family for not letting him go out again until he was doing better. About Helen Eifler, who had told him she couldn't carry him and Josephine at the same time, and had moved on.

"Tony?"

" _What?_ " he snapped. Phoebe jerked like he'd hit her. She made a sad noise.

 _Goddammit._ "I'm sorry, Phoebe." He looked at her.

"You feel bad," she said.

"Yes."

"Why?" She was looking at him with those gray eyes, catching what little light there was.

"Because I got my heart broken," he said, with resentment in his voice, "and I don't know how to fix it."

She was quiet for a moment. "I don't―"

"I told you that you wouldn't understand," he said, sourly.

"That's not nice," she murmured. Tony shot her a glance. "B―Joey said I should be more assertive," she explained. "You're not being nice."

"I don't want to be." Tony pulled his legs up and laid his arms across his knees. "I'm not in a good mood."

"I want to help you," she said. "Tell me how."

"I said, I don't know," he grumbled. "I'm sick and tired of feeling like this, but I can't just stop it."

Phoebe reached out and patted his head again, like she had once before. "I still don't remember much," she said, "but the pain has gone away in my head."

"That's good," he said, and sighed. She paused, her hand on his hair. Tony pushed her away.

"Why do you wear the eye patch?" she asked.

"Because I get very tired of hearing jokes about crying," he shot back. She moved her hand to his face and he grabbed her. "Don't."

"How did that happen?"

Tony bit his tongue and felt tears springing to his good eye. "Just―"

"Tell me. I don't know what to think."

"It's just a scar," he muttered.

"I have those." She pointed to her stomach. "I have a lot of those."

"I have a lot, too," he said. "None of them are special."

"But you let me touch the other ones," she said. "The wound on your shoulder."

"That was different. That was necessary." Phoebe ran her fingers along his shoulder and pulled back the collar of his shirt. It was stiff with blood, now, from her wearing it. Tony pulled away. "I don't want to be touched," he said.

"You don't like it when Joey touches Dog," she murmured, "or when Dog touches Joey."

 _No,_ he thought. _I don't. I wish they would go away and never come back. I should never gone to get her from St. James―she wouldn't have met Marcelo. ...She would be dead._

"I don't like to be touched, either," she said, and crossed her arms, digging her claws into her elbows. Josephine had given her a pair of leather gloves, but her fingers were too long for the material, and her nails had cut through the ends, leaving them exposed.

"That's fine," Tony replied. "No argument from me."

"Do you―" she paused, and cocked her head at the distance. "What is that?" Tony looked in the direction she indicated, but didn't see or hear anything. He shrugged. She curled her fingers into her armor.

"You aren't going to kill yourself, are you?" she asked. "You promised you would help me."

Tony scoffed. "You and Josephine, both," he muttered. In a louder voice, he said, "No, I will not. I'll probably get shot trying to help you find somewhere safe."

"And if I remember what happened, and want to go home?" she asked.

Toy shot her a look. "Don't see why you'd want that, since you keep saying they made you into a monster."

Her hands tightened and her nails popped open stitching in the leather. "I don't fit in out here, and I need medical attention."

He looked at her stomach. "Is it bothering you?"

"No," she said. "But I might have to go home just to have it dealt with." She pulled her claws against the leather and it ripped.

Tony nodded. "Sounds about right," he said.

They sat for a while longer, in silence, before his mother came out of the house and called them down to eat.

* * *

Bitch―Joey, now, because she knew what Amos would say about her new nickname―stretched out on the bed and groaned in relief. "Ah, I think I got spoiled by that mattress in the Metro," she said. "Sleeping out on the ground made me all kinds of sore."

Dog―and she ought to start calling him Marcelo, just because it was less confusing―grunted and sat on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette. He'd removed his armor and was examining the wounds in his legs from the Metro fight. Joey heard a plinking noise and knew he'd finally managed to get the bullet out of his foot that had been bothering him.

She sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling the rough skin. " _Marcelo..._ "

"Back off, bitch, you'll get burnt," he muttered, putting the cigarette out away from his face.

"You don't want me to touch you anymore, is that it? You were so damn anxious to bend me over, earlier." She huffed and sat backwards on the bed.

Marcelo snorted. "You're interrupting my smoke break."

"Oh, fuck you," she muttered, and laid back onto the bed. Her hands roamed up and down the mattress top, feeling the canvas. "I'm surprised Uncle Amos let us share a room."

"He knows better," Marcelo said, and put his foot down to the floor. "After that shit on the road."

Joey grinned. That had been a sight, seeing Amos flat on his ass for once. She rolled onto her side and put her foot into Marcelo's back, pushing him forward in little jabs. " _Marcelo._ "

"You'd better stop," he growled, and she only laughed. She knew better. He knew she knew better, too.

" _Marcelo,_ " she kept saying, pushing him with her foot. He didn't respond, and she rolled her eyes, lowered her foot, and rolled onto her back.

Marcelo put out the cigarette and spun on her, pressing her down into the mattress by her wrists. He put a knee on her stomach, and leaned into her. Joey shrieked in surprise, but laughed.

"You want to play?"


	7. Smart Marcelo

Note: I think I'm getting somewhere... no idea, though. More on Three-Mountain in chapters to come. Word diarrhea tends to be mostly fluff.

Updated: I fixed a minor storyline issue with the scene in the clinic.

Sorry about the mixup, teach me to update during a thunderstorm.

* * *

The sun rose over Three-Mountain, once more, and Phoebe was not home.

Blacksmith Uri had been given the honor of watching as his predecessor was executed; he considered this a warning delivered by the First Iron. Falconbridge watched as Hubbard was torn to pieces, as was tradition, by the Hammer. Uri watched the First Iron.

After examining the notes that Hubbard had left, and pondering for a few hours, Uri asked for and was granted an audience with the First Iron. He held in his hands a list of questions and personal notes, to be set right by the leader of T-Division.

"Hubbard should have been killed," was his first note. "He was studying Phoebe in a far greater capacity than you realize, and his notes indicate that he was exceptionally close to understanding how she was perfect. Using those notes, I can reproduce Phoebe."

"Phoebe was _not_ an accident," Falconbridge told the beta, his voice raw. He stood at the window, staring out over the compound, looking down through the dead trees and gray earth that comprised Three-Mountain's outlying areas.

"No, she wasn't," Uri told him. "These notes that Hubbard left indicate that his attempts to alter her DNA prior to her birth were influenced by an outside force during her incubation."

Falconbridge turned around, his eyes full of vehemence. "Someone changed her."

"Yes, sir." Uri flipped his notes to another page. "Someone altered Nemo, as well, and Hubbard had the information for about a year before he understood what it meant. Someone deliberately entered the nursery and injected a viral load into their eggs, before they were born."

" _Who?!_ " Falconbridge gripped the edge of his desk. The wood splintered and cracked, loud in the quiet office.

"Hubbard hadn't managed to track down the culprit. Security tags at the time showed that everyone was where they were supposed to be―except for you, sir. Whoever entered the nursery, did so with your own security code." Uri flipped to another page. "And Hubbard noted that the viral load was different for each egg, as well. He identified the virus as a FEV variant, but was unable to reproduce it. Our supplies are dwindling, as you are aware, sir."

Falconbridge removed his hands from the desk, and stared down at the Blacksmith. "Someone deliberately came into our home and altered my children, and I was not made aware." He chuckled, and Uri flinched at the ferocity of his tone. "Hubbard was dead the moment he decided this," Falconbridge said. "You will take this information to the Hammer, and bid him to find this person."

"Sir?" Uri cleared his throat and felt the skin wobbling around his collarbone. "And if the culprit turns out to be you?"

Falconbridge laughed. "I appreciate your impartiality, Blacksmith. But I had no part in the altering of my children; I only supplied my genetic material. Perhaps that is unfortunate, now that Phoebe has gone. Perhaps I should have developed an attachment. I cannot change that now." He shot the Blacksmith an appreciative look. "But, given that you are beta, I like that you can act in such a manner. Challenging the First Iron is not something most would do lightly."

"Thank you, sir," Uri said, and bowed his head. He had not anticipated this response; but it was well that he hadn't been immediately assaulted. He felt emboldened. "The other issue I have, sir?"

"Yes?"

"Hubbard had a side project revolving around Phoebe's genetic makeup," Uri said. "He was studying her DNA, and his own, for compatibility."

The First Iron did not react right away, which surprised Uri, but he was ratified when he watched Falconbridge slam his foot down into his desk, tearing it into two with his thick talons.

"Execution was _not good enough for him!_ " he raged.

"I have no evidence that should prove that Hubbard managed to bring his plans to fruition, sir," Uri said, calmly. "I only have the test results and a few terminal entries to even indicate Hubbard was considering this."

"The betas are getting uppity," Falconbridge said, and his face contorted into a horrible grimace. "I think it is time for a cull. Get me the Hammer!"

Uri scrambled away from the First Iron's office, hopeful that he would be spared.

* * *

"Tony!" Josephine yelled into the Sellers house. "Where is that man?"

He heard her, but ignored it. Tony was laying on his bed, his head against the wall, staring at the cracks in the plaster across the room, and letting his mind stay blank. He'd been doing that for the past hour, because it was the only thing he could do. No one would let him leave the house―even May, and she had never been so pushy in her entire life―and Phoebe was away, being operated on. Tony didn't even want to think about her, about whatever she was, about whatever Marcelo had mentioned about eggs.

He didn't want to think about anything. Even Josephine.

Tony sighed, and rubbed his eye where Phoebe had shot at him, feeling the bumpiness of the scar tissue. _Eventually,_ he thought, _there will be a woman who won't make me ugly, one way or another. I can only hope I survive long enough to meet her._

"Tony," Josephine said. She'd opened the door and was leaning into the room. "You mopey bastard, thought you might be on suicide watch."

"I'm not going to kill myself in my parent's house," he muttered. "I still have some sense of propriety."

"Marcelo wants to speak to you," she said. He raised an eyebrow and turned his head to face her. Josephine shrugged. "He said he wanted to talk. I couldn't get anything out of him. C'mon." She motioned at him.

He stirred, and dressed, touching his shoulder. _Another useless scar, another useless day._ Josephine followed him out to the front of the house.

Marcelo was sitting on the fence outside, his feet planted on the ground. Tony was reminded yet again of the disparity between himself and the ghoul, and sighed in defeat. "What. What is it."

Marcelo looked up at Tony, and a smile tugged at his face. "Perk up, merc," he said. "Got good news."

"What could possibly be good news for me, at this moment in time." Tony stared down the ghoul. Filmy eyes met his, a lipless mouth poised to speak. He pushed aside thoughts of the ghoul biting Josephine, making her happy, of him touching her―Tony groaned to himself. Marcelo only served to make him angry, because he had what Tony could not get.

"Found a way to make this work," Marcelo said, and made a circle motion with his hands. "Phoebe."

"Alright," Tony said, his nerves stretching.

"You don't want me around." Marcelo grinned, and chuckled. "Marcelo knows."

"No, I do not," he replied. "But I'm not going to make fun of your intelligence, so drop the act."

Marcelo nodded, absently, and his face became serious. "Ghoul city up in the Fingers, called the Republic."

"What about it." Tony refused to rise to the occasion.

"Phoebe can go there," the ghoul said, shrugging. "I'll take her."

"Better buy some RadAway," Josephine said, and stuck her hand in her pocket, jangling her caps.

"She isn't affected," Marcelo said. "That's the monster part."

"I meant for me," the woman said.

"You aren't going," Marcelo told her, and Josephine exploded on him like a bomb. Tony watched her, feeling sick to his stomach.

"If you think I'm going to fucking _wait around_ while you jaunt off to drop that girl off―" she started, and raised her hands up in double fists. Marcelo grabbed her hands at stared at her, his face impassive. "I'm not letting you leave me behind!"

Tony sighed. "You really can't afford to go there, Josephine," he muttered.

" _I don't care!_ " she hissed, and wrenched her hands from the ghoul's grip. "I'm not staying behind while you wander off into the fucking wastes, Marcelo!"

"Then go _home,_ " he said, quietly, and she went stock still. "Go home, Joey."

" _No,_ " she said, her voice hurt, her eyes shining. "No, Marcelo!"

Tony turned around and put his back to the two. Josephine started crying, and he could hear the low rumble of the ghoul's voice, telling her it would be best for her to wait for him. The sounds of Josephine crying just made his head fill up with fuzz, and he walked down the road away from them.

Tony was standing, staring at the ruined industrial complex outside of Ma Royce's farm, when Marcelo caught up to him. The ghoul ambled up to him, his hands at his side, and didn't speak for a few minutes, staring over the large building, while Tony blanked his mind again and traced the edges of a bomb blast with his eyes.

"I'll take her to the Republic," Marcelo said. "It's not exactly safe, but she would be better off with people who understand monsters better than ARC."

Tony nodded. "She can't stay here," he said.

"The bitch is probably going to stab me for this," Marcelo said, dispassionately.

"She'll..." Tony ran a hand over his face. "I don't know what she'll do." _Never had the chance to fully understand her,_ he thought. _Maybe I wouldn't even like her, in the end._

"You gonna take her home?" Marcelo asked.

Tony laughed, angrily. "Fuck you, man, I can't even get near the barges without my mother threatening to whip me."

"Badass merc like you can't take a little scorn?" Marcelo chuckled. "Ought to lower my estimation."

It hadn't occurred to Tony that Marcelo felt him worthy of respect, or that he was "badass" in any way. Marcelo didn't let people know how he felt, usually. Maybe Josephine knew how he acted, without the social circles they might run around. Right now, the ghoul was distinctly different, probably actually acting himself. Tony felt a bit of relief for being worth that.

"I don't think I would survive that trip," he said, distantly. His mind skidded over the memories of St. James and came to a rest on Stockton, when he and Josephine were children. Playing in the busted shack outside the town, hidden away in the rocks. He'd since learned the place was where the ghoul named Lionel had lived. Bradley, Josephine's unofficial grandfather, had explained why the shack was torn apart; Tony sighed to himself. He and Josephine had no idea, no way to understand the past, at that point in their lives.

"Won't kill you to visit Landis," Marcelo said. "Sure she'll be happy to see her daughter before she dies."

Another thing, that he couldn't, and wouldn't be able to tolerate. Tony grumbled. "You want me to take Josephine there so that Celia can die in peace, with her family at her side."

The ghoul nodded. His eyes came to a rest on Tony's face. "I don't do... Death."

Tony chuckled, meanly. "Everyone knows Marcelo don't die."

"I don't do death," he repeated, "and I can't... help. The bitch. Maybe I caused more death than I needed to, in the past." Marcelo grunted and scratched his hair. "Maybe I wasn't there when _my_ mom died. Regrets."

The man looked up at the ghoul, his eyebrows up. Marcelo, acting unsure of himself? He wanted to laugh, in a way, but he couldn't bring himself to. "I thought you sprang from the wasteland floor, fully ghoul and wielding that rebar," he said, instead, quite seriously.

Marcelo laughed, and slapped Tony on the back. He stumbled forward a few steps from the force, and his back stung. "I like you," the ghoul rumbled. "Do this for me."

"I'll see," Tony said. "Don't suppose you're going to pay me."

Marcelo laughed again. "Fucking mercs," he said, but it was not as mean as it could have been.

* * *

The bitch bitched, and Marcelo turned her voice off inside his head, using his experience as a bouncer to devoutly ignore anything that he didn't want to focus on. Phoebe was recovering from her surgery, and Marcelo, Joey, and Amos had been "invited" to the clinic in Gladstone to explain the egg.

He turned his brain off from the dumb bouncer persona and slipped into the past.

Marcelo hadn't seen a deathclaw in years, but it didn't mean he didn't remember them. Fucking _monsters,_ was what they were. Made by man, made by the wastes into permanence. His memories took him back to before the War, before he was sent to jail, before he was truly Marcelo.

Genetically, deathclaws were a mash of creatures, some chameleon, some human, some only God knew what. Marcelo had read a research paper on the genetic modification, out of curiosity, though he didn't recall the entire process perfectly. He had studied in Pittsburgh, he was smart enough to understand, but he hadn't focused on it. He'd stretched himself out too thin, back then, and he'd paid for it.

Maybe the bitch might think differently of him if she knew. He shrugged to himself. If she didn't like Marcelo, before, she could go home and play with some other person. He knew better than to hold onto whatever they had. Nothing lasted forever.

The egg was larger than he expected it to be. Good that they had gotten to it before she bore it, though he wondered how the girl would have done that―given the amount of surgical scarring the doctor reported, he doubted she would be able to.

"It appears that Phoebe has been cut open on a regular basis," Dr. Hill said. "I found evidence of repeated entry, around the pubic area. There is even a chance that a more permanent opening was going to be made... an artificial channel for removal of the... the egg." He looked up at Marcelo and Joey. She was scrunching up her face in confusion.

Marcelo looked at the clipboard the doctor had made notes on. "Then she can't expel it naturally?" he said. "You made a Pfannenstiel incision?" Joey raised an eyebrow at him. _Just you wait,_ Marcelo thought.

"She's not, uh, built with the proper equipment," the doctor said, unsure what to say. "She has no... cloaca, I guess? To be honest, I've never seen anything like this. Her reproductive organs are strange; she possesses normal ovaries, but somewhere along the line it turns into―" He held up the egg. "This."

It was leathery and pebbled, and brownish-gray. Marcelo held out his hand, and the doctor placed the egg into it. He ran his hands along it. The egg was about 12 inches in diameter, and the shell did not depress easily―it was hard to the touch, very tough. "Impressive," Marcelo said.

"Where the hell did she come from?" the doctor wondered.

"Hell," Joey said, "sounds about right. I can't even―"

"Shut up for a minute," Marcelo said. He looked to Dr. Hill. "She's a genetic hybrid?"

Dr. Hill's mouth bobbed up and down, confused. "I couldn't say―"

Joey scoffed. "What _the fuck_ are you talking about?"

"Did I not say to shut up, bitch?" Marcelo countered. She huffed and crossed her arms. He looked over his shoulder at her, and narrowed his eyes.

"My shitty education didn't exactly prepare me for this sort of thing," she retorted. "I know more about robots than my mom, though."

"My education _did_ ," Marcelo said, and stood to his full height, towering over the girl. He growled at her. Joey frowned and bit her lip. "And if I'm taking Phoebe north, then I need to know, because it could be a problem."

"I'm not so sure I like non-stupid Marcelo," she muttered, and looked away.

"Get the fuck out, then," he said, and looked back to the doctor.

Joey snarled, and kicked his calf, and left. Marcelo did not watch her go. Amos, who had been watching them carefully, cleared his throat once she had slammed the door behind her. "What do you think?" he said.

"I think the girl is fucked," Marcelo said. "Should go home."

Amos nodded, and his eyes dropped to the egg. "Tony―"

"Tony won't have to know," Marcelo said. He clenched a fist and stared at his wrist. A strip of skin with the remains of a tattooed cross met his eyes. "Neither will Joey. This―" he nudged the egg with his other hand, and clenched his jaw. "This shit is fucked up." The ARC man didn't reply. Marcelo turned and faced him, letting his fist fall to his side. They stared at each other for a moment. Amos made no remarks about Marcelo's perceived intelligence. That was good, because he didn't want to have to argue with the ARC leader again.

Marcelo hadn't wanted to bounce the man, on the road. He did it more for the merc's benefit than Joey's, because the bitch was too stupid to understand the effect she had on men. Marcelo was quite used to dealing with stupid bitches. She needed someone like him. Amos knew that.

"And the bounty?" Amos asked him.

"A fourth," he answered. "You and Tony take the rest."

Amos smiled, his beard splitting. "Honestly?"

"We get by," Marcelo said. "You don't see her settling down, do you?"

"No," the merc laughed. "She'll get there, I'm sure, but she's only a seventeen year old girl with issues, right now." He gave Marcelo a critical look. "I'm not entirely sure how you manage her."

Marcelo shrugged. "She wants it," was all he said. "About this..." he picked up the egg. "I'll destroy it."

"You do that," Amos said. "Whatever is going on up there, let's hope it stays behind their doors, after this."

Marcelo agreed.


	8. The Job Picks You

Note: It has been said that I feed off tissues and tears. Poor Tony.

* * *

Josephine was grumbling to herself as they walked up the gangplank, her hand on her rifle strap and the other clenched into a fist. Tony ignored her, and paid their way, taking up a position along the railing. He stared out at the water, and didn't think about anything.

Marcelo and Phoebe had left that morning, much to Phoebe's disappointment. She hadn't wanted to leave Tony, and he had a few new welts on his arm from her clutching at his leather, ripping through it. They itched through his leather, annoyingly.

It was best she left, and Marcelo was tough enough to get her to the Republic. Josephine was unhappy with Marcelo and hadn't stopped grumbling about it. Something about him being too fucking smart for his own good.

" _Who I am now,_ what the fuck does that even―" she was muttering.

"I take it Marcelo told you off?" Tony asked her.

She spun her head at him and her face was furious. He might have flinched if he wasn't so depressed, his reactions slowed by apathy. "Motherfucker used to be a goddamn _doctor,_ apparently," she said.

Tony blinked in surprise. "What?"

"That's what I asked, too! He said, 'Who I am _now_ is not who I _was_ ' and he didn't even finish the argument." She crossed her arms and looked at the ceiling. "And he didn't explain anything, so what the _fuck_ am I supposed to think?"

"What kind of doctor?"

Josephine scoffed. "He wouldn't say!"

"How―"

"That's what _I_ want to know!" she said, throwing her hands up. "How the fuck does he go from being a _doctor_ to―to _that_?!" She gestured back at Gladstone. "Ghouls don't gain muscles―and he's got so many tattoos―so what happened with _that_? How is he so―"

"Tough," Tony finished, interrupting her.

"Yeah," she muttered.

 _My guess would be that the wastes beat it into him,_ he thought, but didn't say that aloud. "You're mad because he hasn't told you about himself."

Josephine looked down and crossed her arms again. "He hasn't told me _anything,_ " she said, her voice starting to wobble. "I guess I'm not worth it."

Tony sighed. "I doubt he's trying to hurt your feelings," he said. "It's probably just him not wanting to get close because you won't live as long as he will."

"But―" She growled and closed her eyes. "I'm fucking _tired_ of being treated like I don't deserve to know―like a _kid!_ "

Tony said nothing, just stared out at the water. He'd been treated as an adult by Amos since he was old enough to hold a gun. Why was he letting her talk to him about the man she'd run off with? She left him in the lurch! He put his foot down on the emotions rising in his chest. _Don't cry,_ he told himself. _Don't. She's not worth it._

Josephine wiped her face and blinked at him. "Are you okay?" she asked him.

"I'll live," he said, "long enough to finish this job."

"What happens when you haven't got a job to finish?" she asked. Her voice was nearing tears, now. "When you don't have anything to―"

"I guess I'll kill myself," he said, tonelessly. His arm started to itch, worse than before. He rubbed it through the leather.

"Why?" Josephine moved to stand beside him, her arms still crossed.

He didn't answer, and kept staring at the water. God, his arm was itching so terribly, he couldn't think straight. He unbuckled his leather armor and pulled the sleeve off, looking at the spot. It was where the I.V. had been in place, out in the Fingers. Phoebe had agitated it with her claws; it was reddened and looked suppurated. It hadn't healed properly. He scratched it, gingerly.

"What's that?" Josephine asked him, craning her neck.

He moved his arm away and clamped a hand on the spot. "Nothing."

"Did you get an infection or something?" she asked. She'd seen it.

"I'll deal with it," he said. "Leave me be."

Josephine made a growling noise― _she's picked up too much from Marcelo,_ he thought―and grabbed him, pulling him away from the railing. She pushed him down onto the deck and crouched, then dug through her pack and pulled out a stimpak. "Fuck you, _Tony,_ I'm starting to lose my patience with this," she muttered, and jabbed him in the shoulder with the stimpak.

"It's my own fucking business," he said, evenly. "You aren't―"

"Shut. Up." She removed the needle and stared at his arm. "Just. Shut _up._ "

The redness did not go away. Tony stared at it, disbelieving. He'd seen stimpaks in action; mending bones that had been sticking out of flesh, reattaching severed fingers, even un-collapsing lungs. The only thing they didn't heal was when someone was pretty much dead... or when they were―

"Oh," Josephine breathed, her voice incredulous. " _Holy shit._ "

Tony started laughing, uncontrollably.

* * *

She'd worked herself into a tizzy, pacing back and forth on the deck of the barge, as night fell and the lights came on. Tony had passed out on the deck, his jacket under his head, laid out like he was a damn corpse at a wake, hands on his stomach.

And he would be a corpse, soon enough―

 _No!_ She couldn't believe it. There was no way in hell he had never managed to go through radiation before, there was no way he'd not had some exposure to it― _how could he be_ ―

She stopped abruptly, mid stride, and almost fell over. He'd been up in the Fingers, just a little while ago. He'd mentioned it offhand, when he was telling Amos about the trip. Amos had shaken his head at Tony but said nothing.

And he said she couldn't afford to go up there, with Marcelo. How long had he been up there, wandering through the irradiated craters? She looked down at him and her face creased in a frown. _Goddammit!_ This was unfair!

She kicked the cabin wall in anger and someone inside hollered at her. "Fuck you!" she yelled back.

And Tony's reaction to the whole thing― _he's gone insane,_ she thought. He'd basically propositioned her, told her it wasn't like she couldn't resist him now―she'd yelled at him in frustration. She didn't like Marcelo because he was―she liked him because he was―well, Marcelo!

At this point she'd figured out out two things. One, that Tony was the unluckiest fucking bastard to walk the earth, and two, that she had to take him to Mona in St. James, and he was not going to be pleased with that. He would flat out refuse to do so, unless she figured out how to get him to comply. Mona would be able to help―Tony knew what was going on, and based on his hysterical laughter, he would not listen. He would just find a nice, quiet spot to lay himself out and pull out his .44 revolver―

Joey cringed and felt tears gracing her face. Fuck, that was all her fault!

* * *

"Goooooood morning St. James! How are we, today? Are you feeling this humidity, this sticky feeling of your ass stuck to your seat, unable to budge but for the skin of your... pants? Hang in there, ladies and gents! A little birdie told me..."

Mona blinked weary eyes at the girl, her face stuck in a permanent scowl, and exhaled. "O-ey..."

"What do I do, Mona mama?" she asked, and her face was shining from tears.

Mona turned to the young man, sitting on the sofa in the lobby of the facility. He'd not come back to St. James for almost two years. His eye hadn't healed properly―probably because she hadn't treated him as well as she might have, she thought to herself―and his facial scar was indeed as terrible as she'd expected. He looked apathetic to the situation.

"We ann have a looh," she muttered. "No romise."

Joey smiled, through the pain and tears on her face, and escorted Tony to the operating room behind the work floor. Mona had him remove his jacket and shirt, and gave him a once over.

In her personal experience, she knew that every ghoul was different. Some of the residents of St. James had been absolutely normal until their hair started falling out, and just sort of flaked apart from the top down. Others had started with their hands and feet, and other parts of their bodies that were in motion or under friction. Occasionally, a ghoul retained their skin until they shed it whole, like a snake, large swaths sloughing off. The skin loosened and peeled, and eventually they resembled something more akin to Mona and other ghouls.

Tony had an injury that wasn't healing, even with stimpaks. Joey thrust a handful of caps at Mona and paid for another two injections, and Mona saw why she was so upset. The injury site did not react to anything other than touch.

He was warm, almost burning up. Mona was afraid to administer anything to him other than garden-variety drugs; given her last treatment of a smoothskin undergoing the change, she felt it was not her place to experiment on people anymore. Tony didn't say a word, just sat and stared at the wall. Mona pinched the flesh above her nasal cavity.

"He's going to kill himself," Joey told her, later. She'd disarmed him and made sure he couldn't hang himself or otherwise do himself in, inside the small utility room that was Mona's bedroom.

Mona sighed and cast an eye to the ceiling of the work floor. "Mahs―"

"Marcelo is up north, doing a job for ARC," Joey said. "I am going home to wait for him to return."

Mona raised the skin above her eyes. "Fine O-nee a frinn," she said.

"I am a friend, Mona mama. But he won't listen!" Joey wiped her face again and sighed. "I don't know what to do, what to expect―"

"Is nor enn of worl." Mona stared at the girl. "Mayee some'hin else, nor ool."

"Oh, God!" Joey said, and dissolved into tears.

Mona patted her back and stood, and she knew that it was not going to be easy, but she couldn't tell Joey that Tony was going to become a ghoul. She didn't know herself. She couldn't know without cellular evidence, and she wasn't about to cut into him. And if Tony was going to kill himself... She wouldn't need to worry about being proved wrong.

Joey and Tony stayed the night, and in the morning, a very tired and red-eyed smoothskin led a depressed near-ghoul down to the barge landing.

* * *

Amos stared at Josephine and Tony. "You can't be serious," he said.

ARC headquarters was empty except for one lone prisoner in the cells. That one had passed out in a puddle of piss and vomit, after being brought in by Jesse, who'd gone home. Amos was sitting at his desk as usual, waiting for business to pick up, when the two came to see him.

Josephine grumbled a little. "Look, I'm going north to meet Marcelo. I'm taking Tony. Dr. Donald says he's changing. So why bother? The only person who will need RadAway is me, and I have some."

"And you want me to do what?"

"Tell Mom and Dad the news," Tony said.

Amos shot him a critical look. "Why can't you?" Tony looked away. Amos rubbed his beard. "...Are you still trying to kill yourself?"

"Why bother," Tony said, his voice even.

"Uncle Amos," Josephine said, pleadingly. "C'mon."

"I'll wait until you have a better understanding of the situation before divulging information that is so important," Amos said.

"I'm _sure,_ " Josephine said, flippantly. "You can, at least, tell them that Tony isn't going to kill himself, anymore, right?"

The ARC leader shrugged. "Might be better to let that sit," he said. "They think you're in Stockton by now. I'll let them think that." And, he was sure, Jesse was banking on Celia to be a comforting hand to Tony, because she'd been through her own suicide crises. "Promise me you'll be careful, Josephine."

"That's bullshit, and you know it," the teenager said.

"Don't swear, Josephine."

She rolled her eyes. "I promise I will be as careful as I can."

Amos nodded, and reached out, grabbed her hands, and deftly handcuffed her to the chair in front of the desk.

"WHAT?!" she yelled. " _WHAT ARE YOU―_ "

"Calm down," he said. "Tony, tell me the truth. What is going on? Did you let her talk you into coming back so she could get back to Marcelo and not face her mother? Because this―this is a very awful and not at all believable prank."

Tony gave a nasty little laugh. "She's not lying, Amos."

Amos stared at Tony. He had a hard time imagining it, he really did. "Show me."

The young man pulled his jacket off―while Joey rattled the chair and stood up, swinging it around, knocking papers off Amos' desk, her hands cuffed through the back rest―and prodded a spot on his right elbow. He explained he'd had to put an I.V. line in his arm and left the access there, while he was traveling through the Fingers. Amos covered his eyes and shook his head. "I told you not to go there," he murmured.

"I know, but I wanted to get past that area as quickly as possible," Tony said. "Because of the ghoul city up there."

The flesh on his elbow looked like it was about to explode with pus. "Have you tried to lance it?" he asked, out of curiosity.

"Dr. Donald did," Tony said, tonelessly. "It filled back up, and she said I could expect that to happen everywhere, until the skin sloughs off. Once there isn't enough pressure between the skin and muscles to support... this." He gestured to the suppuration. "She said to take pain meds as needed, and talk to Marcelo about it, and make sure I have someone around to help me with the parts I can't see."

Amos held his nephew, then, silently. Tony ran a hand along his uncle's back and rubbed his shoulder blade. "This shouldn't have to happen to you," he muttered.

"It's okay, Amos," he said. "The job picks us, right?" Tony pushed him back. He looked less miserable, now. Tony was heartbroken that his nephew should experience something so... dramatic, but be better off for it.

"Yes," Amos said. "Are you _sure_ you will not kill yourself?"

Tony nodded, and a weird smile came to his face. "Maybe things will be a little different, now," he said. He shot a glance at Josephine, who was trying to figure out how to escape.

"No, Tony," Amos said. "No. That's not―"

"Amos, you let me go this instant―" Josephine snarled. "I swear to all things holy―"

Tony just shrugged, a faint smile on his face.

 _Good God,_ Amos thought. _Good God Almighty._

* * *

Marcelo and Phoebe made it to the outskirts of Three-Mountain by the end of the week, though Marcelo had to carry the girl through the night twice. It rained once, and he was thoroughly soaked, but it was only rain.

Life worked in weird ways, sometimes. Marcelo felt the girl's chest heave against his back, and she asked about Tony a few times, but she was mostly silent. That was good, because while Marcelo might have good things to say about Tony, he wasn't entirely sure why Tony had bothered with the job, why he would want to bring the girl back to Gladstone, given she was such an abnormality. And this made him think more thoughts, thoughts that he wanted not to think at all.

His brain was switched on, now, after 150 years of being dumb old Marcelo. It was annoying. He needed to get back out in the wastes with the bitch, go back to being what worked best for this world. Smart Marcelo was going to get himself killed, talking like a fancy twat with words that cost more than some people's lives.

Dumb Marcelo wouldn't have offered to take the girl home, though. Dumb Marcelo would have gone back into the Metro with Joey and let the merc fuck shoot himself in the head out in the wastes. Joey asked for his help, then. He helped because he―

 _Jesuchristo,_ he thought. _I'm getting soft in the fucking head for the bitch._

But Smart Marcelo thought that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to have a chocolate-skinned teenager running around after a grumpy old ghoul with anger issues and a penchant for violent sex.

 _Well, shit._


	9. Nemo

They smelled her, in the dark.

They set upon her and the ghoul-smell in the dark, ripping, screaming, tearing into flesh. Fire burned in their eyes, in the time for sleep, their veins filled with vitriol, their hearts filled with carnage.

They wanted the Mother back, the songs that they sung to her while she was gone still echoing in their heads. They were justice, enacted upon those who had stolen away the Mother.

The ghoul killed two of their own, and they screamed at this, but they were ordered to take the girl, and any other with her, alive. Alive was something that they did well, but within the boundaries of what the term "alive" actually meant.

They brought her home, and the songs were sung anew.

* * *

Marcelo opened his eyes again to the world, and noticed he was bound. This was of little concern. There hadn't been a restraint he couldn't break free of, yet. He noticed the pain, and that was a mild concern. A mild concern because pain was something he'd become accustomed to, but didn't like. You didn't get to be as old as he was without taking a few lumps.

What was most concerning was the asshole standing in front of him, looking for all the world like a goddamn deathclaw, but also like a man, in the same way that ghouls were also men. He kept his eyes hooded, staring. The asshole stared back. It was a test, and Marcelo would win.

The test ended with the introduction of an electric shock in his chest, and he dropped his eyes in surprise more than anything else. _Fucking cheating bitches._

"Very good," the asshole said, in a voice that was best reserved for Saturday night B-movies. Marcelo looked up again, moving his eyes but not his head. He was bound fully, his arms and legs and forehead attached to some kind of gurney. Vaguely, he understood what that implied; he was not only being tested on resolve, but physically, as well.

" _Chingate_ ," he mumbled. It hurt to speak. His mouth was torn, pulled away from his teeth. _The fuck,_ he thought, _is going on?_

"Do you understand what is about to happen to you?" the asshole asked.

Marcelo looked out above him, saw metal walls, saw the medical equipment on a small table. He was upright, facing the asshole, but he was facing a wall away from the door. He could hear it behind him, the door opening, hear footsteps and clicking noises, hear the soft swish of clothing. He glared at the asshole, giving it all he had. He wouldn't die here.

 _Si me muero, me muero de risa, con Joey._

Damn smoothskins, always getting him into trouble.

* * *

Josephine stared out at the landscape, her face in a permanent frown. "I don't get it," she said, sounding hurt. She had her hands on her hips, legs apart, standing on the edge of an impact path that had been caused by a bomb so many years before they were even born.

Tony was sitting in the trail that the bomb had left, as it had torn into the ground. He pulled his legs into him, laid his arms across his knees, and stared down into the pool of irradiated water before him. His arm no longer itched. In fact, he felt a lot better, like all the pain he'd been caused was washed away by the filthy water he stared at.

It was nice, he thought, to have a worry-free mind after so many years of feeling tormented. He was free. Free of Josephine and her trouble, free of Helen and her criticism, free of the pain he'd felt for saving the day and getting no reward, back when Josephine had gotten into trouble on the island.

"Are you _listening_ to me?" she asked, shrilly. "I don't understand what _the fuck is going on!_ "

Tony sighed, and looked at his hands. He supposed he ought to start committing his skin to memory. Who knew how long he would have it, after all?

"Tony, what the _fuck_ ―"

"Well, it's obvious that they lied to us," Tony said, calmly.

"Yeah, but―" she hissed in anger. " _Why?_ "

"Because they were going to take Phoebe home," he said. He stared up at the sky, the pale white of the clouds blending flawlessly into the white of the nuclear sky. In contrast, the scarred black earth rose and fell across the mountains. Tony felt like he wouldn't mind living in a place so dramatic in appearance. He was half-tempted to walk back down to the Republic and apply for citizenship.

Their trip to the Republic had been uneventful―beyond the normality of the wastes, which included various insects, yao guai, and a couple of stupid raiders who hadn't seen Josephine until it was too late―but when they'd arrived, they were turned away. No good explanation, just a statement, that they were not allowed to enter the town unless they were ghouls. Even Tony, who had started thinking of himself in such terms, was not allowed to go into the town. It seemed to be something that the locations northwest of Gladstone had in common.

"I am going to flay that decaying bastard alive," she muttered, and he looked over his shoulder at her. "What?" she asked, angrily. "He's acting so―"

"Adult?" Tony asked. "Lying to a child?"

Josephine whipped a rock at him and hit him in the temple. He jerked backward in pain. "You shut the _fuck_ up, Anthony Sellers!" she said, close to tears. "I don't like this! I don't know what's going on, and I've lost Mar―" She turned away and put her face in her hands. "Oh, _God,_ " she muffled out. "This must be what you feel like, _all the time._ "

Tony rubbed his head. "Being violent never helped me," he said. "And really, we know where they've gone."

"Three-Mountain," she whispered. "Oh, God, Tony, what if he got _killed?_ "

"Marcelo don't die," Tony said, gently. He put his legs down and stared at the water again. "You know that."

"Do I?" She sniffled and wiped her face. "Do I, _really?_ "

He grinned a little, reveling in the feeling of being on the other side of the fence, for once. "Shit, Josephine, just because you learned something new about him, doesn't change why you like him."

She stood in silence, staring out at the wastes. Tony pushed himself off the ground and walked up the slope to stand beside her. She made a loud sucking noise in her nose, and Tony smiled at that. She was still a snot-nosed brat, which was part of the reason he'd liked her to begin with. That, and her incredible strength of will, which might be slipping now, but always rebounded.

"Tony," she said, her nose stuffed up, "are you going to come with me?"

"To Three-Mountain?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered. She was shaking, slightly. "I'm not going to leave him out there, if he might need help. Everything I ever heard about that place screams trouble and death."

"I recall you were screaming that in the Metro tunnels," Tony murmured.

"Well, this Bitch isn't letting her Dog be put down," she said, and her voice grew stronger. "So if you are coming, you have to tell me now."

"Are you asking me to help?"

Josephine sighed, and looked at her hands, her fingers curled into her palms. "I've done you so bad, all our lives." She closed her eyes. "You remember Captain Calhoun and her sidekick, Sergeant Sellers? How we used to run around and pretend to be soldiers?"

Tony laughed, softly. "Yeah, you got my ass kicked on a regular basis, with that one. Michael still thinks I'm an idiot."

"You remember the trick we played on my dad? With that nuclear battery we pried out of the ruined car?"

He did; it had gotten him sent home for almost a whole year, grounded to the Sellers home. The only reason he was able to spend so much time in Stockton was because of Celia Landis and her school, which had taught him a lot more about explosives than his father had reckoned it might. The car's power source was intended for a science project, but―

He remembered Jack Calhoun not seeing the tripwire, falling flat on his face, and the look on everyone's faces when the battery detonated. It hadn't _hurt_ anyone―though it left an irradiated and destroyed kitchen in the Landis longhouse. Jack had been leaving the house instead of entering it, and Tony had realized their mistake as soon as he heard the explosion.

"Hell, we almost killed your dad," he said. "Shit, we should have been whipped harder."

Josephine looked at him, her face mischievous. "There's a highway up near the Metro that has a whole row of cars with those batteries in them."

"What's your plan?" Tony asked, scratching at his bad eye.

"Get them batteries, rig some to the place, blow the _shit_ out of it." She hit him in the chest with the back of her hand. "Hey, you got a sniper rifle, I'm good at throwing. I could toss them out and you can blow them up."

"Josephine, those batteries weigh like thirty pounds." He stared at her blandly.

"I've been working out," she said, and flexed her arm. "But, beyond that, we need to scout the area, get a feel for the compound. They're supposed to kill anyone who comes near, and I don't intend to die."

"Well, maybe it would be better to have some help, then?" Tony asked. "I mean, beside you and me."

She raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"The Bitch needs her pack," he said, mysteriously, and motioned her to follow him back down to the ghoul town.

* * *

Marcelo grunted, feeling the pain growing more intense. The bastards hadn't made him scream like a bitch, yet! It would take more than some stupid electrodes on his muscles to get him started. He stared at the wall and felt his thighs spasming uncontrollably. _Jesuchristo_ , it was like being tickled, and he fucking hated being tickled! It just made him more angry.

The restraints were giving him trouble. He couldn't break out of metal, he knew. Even trying to put different types of pressure on the bands that encircled his chest and knees was difficult, with the near-constant stream of electricity they were feeding into those goddamn electrodes.

No one had touched the medical equipment, either. He knew what that meant. They were trying to break him. They wanted him to imagine what they could do. He knew it was because of the stupid deathclaw girl's egg, which he had smashed with his rebar club in the woods outside of Gladstone. They wanted to know what had happened. He wasn't fucking talking. Let them sit on their stupid black claws and twiddle.

The electricity flooded through him again, this time through the electrodes on his jaw, causing him to clench his mouth shut, cracking a few teeth. Goddammit, he only had twenty left, and dentures just didn't fucking _exist_ , anymore!

In the night, they had come out of the darkness into their camp like water flowing across stones, but he had been ready. He'd smashed a couple, killed at least one, and Phoebe had shrieked and distracted them, but he could still feel those fucking claws ripping him up. His mouth was all fucked up. He couldn't very well talk with shreds of flesh flopping all over the place, could he? Didn't these fuckers understand how to torture someone?

His feet! _Fuck me!_ The spastic movements of the flesh made him growl in pain. _Fuck them!_

He cleared his mind and placed Joey first and forefront. Joey, her face scowling, her eyes shining, her mouth spewing curses; Joey with her skin that tasted like salt and sometimes apples; her precious fucking skin that he didn't care if she got scarred because, _Jesuchristo_ , she, at least, still fucking _had_ skin; her tiny little brown breasts, her toned body that he had abused so often it was shameful, making her cry in pain; her fucking legs, wrapped around him so tightly he thought she was going to squeeze him in half, she was so fucking strong. Those thighs, those calves!

He smiled, grimly, through the mess that was his mouth now, and kept that image right where he needed it to be. _Fuck, yeah._

Nobody, absolutely _nobody_ , bested Marcelo. _Especially_ when he was distracted by a pretty girl.

* * *

Phoebe's eyes were blurry when she managed to climb her way out of a terrible dream of ice and pain. She blinked and tried to adjust herself to the darkness. There was a cold metal floor under her, and her arms and legs were shivering, in the cold. She jerked around in surprise.

"Terrible, isn't it?" a deep and echoing voice came, from the darkness to the left. She whipped her head around, but couldn't see anything through the mire.

"What―" she began, and pushed herself upward onto the wall, leaning into it for support.

"The Wilder Wastes are such a heathen place," the voice came again, this time from above her. She looked up, but there was nothing. This room was massive, to have such deep darkness. If she stepped away from the wall, she might not be able to find her way back. She trembled.

"Who―" she said.

"Why bother to visit?" the voice said, and a decidedly insane laugh rang out, to her right. She snapped her head to see, but yet again, nothing.

"Where―"

"Come now, Phoebe," the voice said. "You can visit the Wilder Wastes, and survive the heathens, and you have nothing to say but simple ejaculations of bewilderment?"

"Where am I?" she said. "Where is Dog?" She remembered the creatures in the darkness, screeching at her, calling her "Mother". She shuddered.

"You are _home_ , dear sister," the voice called, from directly ahead of her. "And that creature that you so endearingly call Dog? Why..." A glint of skin in the darkness. She focused on it, studying the expanse. "That one, lovely, is being asked a few polite questions. We can't just let baby sister outside to play, without knowing who she's been playing with."

Phoebe swallowed, roughly. The air was dry here, and chilly, and she rubbed her shoulders to warm them up. "Who―?" she asked.

The skin moved and before she realized it, she was pinned to the wall, ten feet off the ground, one sharp claw piercing through her shoulder to make contact with the wall. She gasped in pain, squeezing her eyes shut.

"I am disappointed, Phoebe," the voice came, and she opened one eye, her hands shaking and loose at her sides. "I thought you would remember me. How could you forget your own dear brother?"

 _Nemo._ She stared down at his long body, at his exaggerated horns, at his baleful eyes, digging deep into her own. She saw his tail swishing slowly back and forth, saw the teeth bared in the misshapen mouth, his head tilted slightly to the side. The gray-black skin, mixing with the darkness around him, allowing stealth, the ten-inch claws on those spindly fingers.

He ran his free hand along her leg, tearing effortlessly through the leather, destroying her pants. Her leg was not bleeding. He was precise.

"I haven't forgotten, Nemo," Phoebe said, grimacing. "I was not given memory until now. Why am I here, in your room?"

"Oh," he said, the face contorting with the words he spoke, "you came to see Father first, but you were sleeping, so I asked to watch you, until you woke."

She remembered, now. And she remembered what Dog had told her. She did what she was given advice to do―she was a monster, and she would show it. She grinned at him. "You are so sweet, dear brother. Remove your hand. We will play, as we often have, before."

Nemo forced his mouth into a gruesome half-smile. "I do not believe your words," he growled, and another claw went into her shoulder. She inhaled at the pain. He sliced through the other leg of her pants, sniffing the leather. "You have been tainted by the heathen masses. You smell of shit, and ungulates. And..." he inhaled deeply at her lower abdomen, and grinned. "And you are no longer carrying an egg."

Phoebe shrieked, in pain and panic, and he reeled away from the sound, tossing her into the air, away from him. She bounced into the darkness, and was up on her feet within seconds, kicking off her boots onto the metal. Her toes recoiled in pain at the metal. Couldn't be helped. She had to run.

She looked up and she could make out a grate above them, thin and weak. It would not hold under stress. She would have to get out. Nemo would not be able to jump to the grate, or else he would have escaped.

"Sister," he called, sing-song through the darkness. "I can hide better than you can. I always have."

"You wear my blood, brother," she said, and strode forward, without fear now. "I can smell you, even when you think you are hidden." She raised her hands, open into a wide position, and stepped up onto his knee, where he thought he was hidden. Her hands went down into his side, and she climbed him, using her claws as pitons.

Nemo roared, bucking wildly against the unwanted attack. His hand came around and sliced at her, cutting open the belt at her lower back, slicing her muscles, and she flew off into the darkness again. "Now, _you_ wear _mine!_ " he growled. "I will have you, Sister!"

Phoebe shuddered. She felt the chill in the air suddenly turn warm, and lights began to flood the room. Nemo screeched in terror and retreated from the lights to a dark corner, holding his face. A sharp grating sound came from above her, and a cord looped out around her, lassoing her, pulling her from the enclosure. She was jerked roughly into the air, and hit her head against the edge of the metal grate above her. The world spun.

"Daughter," the voice of a true monster rang out, "we have _much_ to discuss."


	10. El Fuego de Dios

Note: Fixed a problem with the subject of Joey's attack. Sorry about that.

* * *

Joey stared at the people in the bar. They stared right back, like they hadn't seen a fucking smoothskin in their entire lives. It irritated her, but if she had picked up anything from that hulking brute bastard of hers it was how to put on airs. So she stared, showing off entirely too much skin for her own liking and played her part.

Tony had taken her blastmaster helmet and was pretending to be a ghoul―well, _fuck._ _There isn't any pretending, anymore,_ she told herself. He was acting like what he was, making his voice raspy, hiding his face and skin under layers of leather.

He'd told the guards that she was his woman, so they could get into the Republic. She did _not_ like that. She was wearing her t-shirt and black pants, divested of her armor and the various spikes she'd painstakingly sewn into her pants. _Man, it's gonna take hours to put that back._

Tony had managed to talk two ghouls into teaming up with them, in the last six hours. Joey had been getting free drinks from the bartender the whole time; he was eyeballing her with that special kind of look that she understood all too well, but he didn't know that she had gotten a _lot_ of practice holding her liquor. She sighed, put her hand on her cheek and leaned into the table, uncrossing and crossing her legs again. If they didn't get out of here, and soon...

She was going to make Tony buy her a goddamn helmet, just so she could headbutt that _fucking bartender_ for leering at her.

She missed Marcelo. Not having her beastly half made her sad, and she didn't like sad Joey. Sad Joey was downright pitiful, crying too much, showing her weakness. Tony had been neutral about the whole thing―not that she hadn't heard his comments to Amos, back in Gladstone, and understood what he thought might happen―and it was downright annoying. He was still being a goody two-shoes about the whole business, acting like he used to, when he thought he had a chance.

Well, he _didn't._ _That_ was _that_. Joey belonged to another man―she closed her eyes and felt the beer finally catching up to her. Goddammit, the _last_ thing she needed was another St. James. She pushed the beer away from her and laid her chin on top of her forearms, looking at the tiny bar.

The Republic was a half-decent place. It was cared for, obviously. Ghouls wandered around, fixing up the metal shacks and repairing the plaster with irradiated mud and trowels. There were two levels, and the upper one rested within the outer ring of rock that protected the town. She understood how they stayed safe, inside the rock bowl.

One of the fuckers at the table across from her was eyeballing her now. _God!_ Some of them were still repulsive, even to Joey, who had been spending every available minute of the last two years with Marcelo. She stared at him with a look of loathing. He grinned, and ran a black tongue along the top of his bottle of whiskey, suggestively.

"Tony," she said, a little too loudly.

"One moment, dearest," he rasped back, from the next booth.

"I can't wait a fucking _moment,"_ she muttered. She sighed, and closed her eyes.

A weight slid into the booth next to her. She smelled booze, heard creaking leather, and felt a rough hand sliding around her waist. Without looking, she brought her elbow back onto a face, feeling the mostly intact nasion jamming into her flesh. The head went backward into the wall with a satisfying thunk and she grinned a little. _Ah, Marcelo would be proud!_

"Fuck!" the man said, and she grabbed the beer bottle, intent on slamming the ghoul in the head with it, and spun on him. Her arm began to bleed from the contact, and she hissed at the man, bringing down the bottle. She stopped before it would have impacted, and laughed. "Sorry, Chang," she said, slurring. "You can't sneak up on me like that."

"You're a _spitfire,_ hun," he rasped, holding his face, and she shrugged. The ghoul had offered to come with them, without payment. She owed him in advance for that.

"Well, I wouldn't be going up the mountain without some kind of fire under my ass," she told him. "What the fuck you grabbing for?"

He grinned, showing his missing front teeth, and nodded at the bar. "Had a bet," he laughed.

"Chang, you pussy!" the bartender yelled.

Joey shot a glare at the bartender. "Tony, _now!"_

He finally pulled himself away from the ghoul he'd been speaking to. "What," he asked. "I'm almost done."

"Don't care," she said. "Man, I can't _do_ this. There's too many assholes here, and I don't even have my gun." He'd taken it away from her, because he said she couldn't be trusted. _He was right._

"It's alright, Josephine," he said, keeping up the rasp. "I'm negotiating price."

She fumbled in her pockets and drew out a pouch, then tossed it to Tony. "Hurry the fuck up, _then."_

Joey fiddled with the wound Chang had imparted on her arm and glared at the ghoul. He moved away from her in the booth, and laid his head back on the wall, closing his eyes.

"Baby-doll," another voice said, but surprisingly not a ghoul voice, "you're the best thing I've seen since Choco-Chunk Bars existed."

"Oh, fuck _off,"_ she muttered, not bothering to look up. A hot exhale of whiskey shot across her face, and she waved it away. "I said, _fuck off!"_

He sloshed forward onto her, grabbing and pinching handfuls of flesh through her clothes. She shrieked in rage and grabbed up her beer bottle, slamming it into the back of the ghoul's head. Chang was immediately alert, and sprang from the booth, pushing the ghoul away.

It was the one who had been licking his whiskey. She shuddered. "Goddammit! _Tony!"_

"Alright, we're good. Let's get out of here," he said, and pulled her outside by one hand. Chang followed, and another two ghouls trailed behind him. They stepped out under the white sky, while Joey muttered curses and shot a parting glare at the bartender.

"I am Tony," he said, "and this is―"

"Call me Bitch," she said, feeling angry.

"This is Bitch. Bitch wants to hunt, yes?" Tony turned his head to her. She nodded, smiling viciously. "Bitch, that there is Romeo. You already met Chang."

She grunted at Chang, and he put his thumb where his nose would have been. "Who's this fuckwad?" she asked, jabbing a thumb at a goggled ghoul, shorter than the other two.

"I'm Luck-Lucky," he said, and she raised an eyebrow at him. "Be-best scout in Northern Mi-Michigan," he added, looking down.

"Great," she moaned, sarcastically. "How you gonna relay information with that fucking stutter?" Chang made a disapproving noise. "Hey, they call me Bitch for a goddamn _reason!"_ she said.

Tony laughed, and Joey was startled. He sounded... happy, for the first time in years. "Now that we are all here, let's get to work," he said.

 _Shit,_ Joey thought. _He really has gone batty, and he's not even lost any skin, yet!_

* * *

Tony stared at Josephine, full of nervous energy, nearly jumping right out of her skin. She was a mess, trying to come up with a plan. He smiled through the hood at her and took over for her, like she had for him in the Metro.

"Alright, we're looking for a big ghoul and a girl," he said.

"What, like an opposite version of you two?" Romeo asked, looking at Joey. She snarled at him, baring her teeth.

"Sort of," Tony said. "But this ghoul and girl are just as tall as each other. About six-foot... what?" He looked at Joey. She held up a whole hand. "About six-foot-five, sort of purplish, the girl is sort of gray. They should be somewhere in the area, but they might be in Three-Mountain."

"We-we should ask Lore-Lore-Lore―" Lucky began. He heaved a sigh. "Lore-Lore―"

"Lorelei, the night guard," Chang said. "She would know what's up in the surrounding area."

"She got eyes on the compound up at Three-Mountain?" Josephine asked.

"Usually," Romeo answered. "The things that come out of _that_ place―" he shrugged, hands up in the air. "We get paid to not argue."

"What do you mean?" Tony asked.

Chang looked at Romeo and shook his head. "Uhh―"

Josephine pulled Tony's combat knife from his side and set upon the gap-toothed ghoul, jabbing him directly under the chin. "You will tell me what you are talking about or _I swear to God I will give you a new hole to breathe out of._ "

Chang blinked at the knife. "Damn." He flicked his eyes to Romeo. "Well―"

"They pay-pay us to kee-keep an eye out," Lucky said. "The Mountain guys."

"And it's done very well for us, up here in the boonies," Chang added. _"Please_ don't stab me, hun."

Josephine removed the knife, slowly, and didn't remove her hand from his shirt. She growled. "So you've been protecting them? That nasty commune of deathclaws and hell?"

Chang blinked at her. "How do you―"

"Every sink gets a leak," she said. "Even the most well-maintained ones."

"You've been learning," Tony muttered. She always surprised him.

"Shut up," Josephine said. "Now... _una y otra vez_ , Chang. Tell me what you know about the place."

"The sue-sue-sue―" Lucky began.

"Not _you,_ Skippy," Josephine shot. Chang and Romeo jerked in anger and eyes became harder.

"Josephine," Tony said, chastising. "Shut the fuck _up."_ He turned to the ghouls and sighed. "Look, the Bitch is a little upset―"

"A _little!?"_ she snarled, letting go of Chang. "You―"

"―Because Three-Mountain probably has her boyfriend hostage."

Chang raised the skin above his eyebrow. "Thought that was you," he said, staring at Tony.

"Eh, I've known her for... what, seventeen years now?" He looked at her. "We're cousins, and not the kissing kind." Not that he wouldn't―he stopped himself. He knew she wasn't going to have that. He would never be able to get her out of his head, but he could afford to wait, _now._ Tony grinned to himself.

"Fuck!" she said. _"Fuck!_ It's my goddamn birthday!" She snarled, and stomped away from the men. Tony could hear her cursing in both English and Spanish, kicking debris and making a mess outside of the grimy bar in the Republic. _"Fucking hell!_ If he's dead on my _fucking birthday―"_

"The Bitch is very unhappy with the situation," he settled. "So, can you tell us anything to help? Because I'll tell you," and at this Tony started laughing, "I do not want to have to go back home with a banshee on my ass."

"A-ha," Chang said. "I feel that. Let's go, before she gets us thrown out."

Tony put his hand on the back of Josephine's shirt and dragged her out of town, kicking and cursing.

* * *

It was probably close to twelve hours after he woke up, with the electrodes on his body, that they started the actual torture. Marcelo swore, grunting and hissing, as one of the gray deathclaw-people cut his skin off his body, defleshing his right arm. There wasn't much skin to take off, so they'd shaved the muscle.

It was just pain, he reminded himself. He thought about pushing Joey up against a Metro wall, damn near chewing on her skin, covered in blood splatter from killing raiders. _Pain goes away._

Scalpels sliced, pliers plied, a hammer was introduced to his knees, and went wanting. Marcelo did not give into them, did not make any coherent sound but the occasional swear word. He was almost certain that they had cut off a finger on one hand, but the pain was too intense for him to feel it. Who taught them to torture? Shit, they _sucked_ at this!

He roared in laughter, his raspy voice cutting through the room, bouncing off the walls. It took more than a _little fucking pain_ to scare him!

But then they introduced him to something they called Louis the Fifth, and they managed to wrench a howl from his worn-out vocal cords. Marcelo burned in the restraints, the overbearing smell of flesh on fire reaching his nostrils, his body crumbling under the overpowering heat.

 _El fuego de Dios!_

* * *

"I understand you're inclined to talk to us," the asshole was saying. Marcelo's eyes were on fire, nearly burnt right out of his fucking head. He glared at the shadow that was speaking, and growled. "Well?"

He could still smell the burning flesh, see the flash. What the fuck they were using―somewhere in his head he knew what it was, but the pain was too much, even for Marcelo. He suspected his entrails were hanging from him, after that fucking death beam had burnt a hole into his body. Like he needed a piercing, on top of everything else.

He laughed. They'd broken _him!_ _How fucking stupid._

"Yeah," he muttered, through ragged flesh. "Yeah, I'll fucking talk."

"Good," the asshole said, his voice fucking full of itself. Marcelo wanted to fight some more, but he also wanted to see how far he could push this shit.

They were going to kill him, of course. But he would have his fun. He had only been broken _once._ He looked forward to _more._

"Where is the egg?"

Marcelo laughed. "Oh, that?" he wheezed. Cold air moved in and out of his chest, through the hole. "Smashed it."

The asshole didn't seem as upset by that as he expected he might. "Very well. And where was Phoebe taken, that she could be operated upon?"

" _Vete al infierno,_ " he spat, blood flying from his mouth.

"Hmm." The asshole moved closer. "Perhaps a little more of the L-U/V."

Marcelo groaned. "South," he muttered.

"Where, exactly, in the south?"

 _No,_ he thought, _no, I don't want Joey in danger. Marcelo no mueren._ He laughed again. " _Besa mi culo, puto._ "

"...Bring the laser back," the asshole said. "This is quite fun, ghoul. Let's try again."

* * *

Phoebe sat in the room she'd called home and she remembered. She remembered how the Blacksmith had treated her well, like Tony had, how he always had a little treat for her, how he patted her head and told her nice words.

He was dead, though. The new Blacksmith was not as nice, and had subjected her to a painful and invasive physical search. Her stomach ached from the multiple surgeries. She ought to have killed herself, before now, she thought. Rather than live through this hell.

 _Everything hurts._

The ones who called her mother were curled up at her feet, skinny legs kicking in their sleep. They were almost like dogs, lower members of the family, and they did what she told them... to a point. She could not order them to kill another. Phoebe stared at the one nearest to her and felt angry.

If she killed herself―

She shook her head. The Blacksmith would only take her body and remake her, in another image. She would need to do more than take herself out of the equation. She stared at the little ones, and she wondered how far she could go, as a monster, before she was no longer herself.

How far could she push it?

Phoebe lifted her foot and placed it on the neck of the little one nearest her, and stood.

* * *

Alarms rang through T-Division. Blacksmith Uri was jostled from his research, staring up and into the air. That―that had never happened before, in his memory. He stared across the laboratory at the beta researchers, and eyes were wide.

Red lights spun on the walls, klaxons blaring. The Hammer moved through the hallway. The hunters were nowhere to be found. Uri pushed himself back from the desk, stood, and moved to the doorway. The Anvil, defenders of the compound, were running through the hallways, now, carrying their sledgehammers.

"What is it?" one of the researchers asked.

Uri pulled himself away from the doorway. "We are under attack," he said. "Go to your rooms and wait for confirmation. If necessary, you will defend the compound."

The researchers scattered into the halls. Uri pondered for a moment, watching the circular rotation of the alarm lights. He would check in on Phoebe, and secure her, before he secured himself.

* * *

"Oooh- _hoooooo!"_ Joey shrieked, in delight. Chang grabbed her and pulled her backwards into a room, shielding her from the next blast of nuclear energy. _"DAMN!"_ she yelled, her face twisted into a grin. "I _love_ it!"

"You're crazy, Bitch," he muttered. She was, too, having so much hate to expend. Chang wouldn't have joined up with the two unless one of them was bat-shit, though, and after what Tony had said about her boyfriend―and the girl he was with, _a-ha,_ Chang knew what was up. He grinned a little, felt the girl's body twisting out of his grasp. He held her a little tighter, hearing the crackling fire in the hallway. She was so damn _soft._

"Let me go, you _bastard,"_ she grunted, and peeled his hands off her waist. Chang followed her into the hall, feeling the familiar wash of radiation on his body.

"You alright, hun?" he asked her. "Not bothered by the rads?"

"The fuck are _rads,"_ she muttered. "Oooooh, look! This one's still _alive!"_ She picked up a three-foot-long piece of twisted metal and jammed it into the body, turning it into the flesh. The creature hissed and gurgled, and lay still.

"You sure he's in here?" Chang asked.

"I might not know _much_ about him," she replied, grunting with effort to remove the twisted metal, "but I know he _won't_ go down easy. And he ain't out _there―"_ she gestured back the way they came, with the metal, blood dripping from its length. "So he's here. And _I will find him."_

Chang raised what used to be eyebrows, staring at her. "You're one in a _million,_ hun," he said. He would give almost anything for a woman willing to blow a community to hell, just to get him back. ...Even if she intended to _kill_ him because he'd run off with another girl.

"Nope!" She swung the metal piece, testing it. She grinned at him, and her eyes shined in her brown face. Chang felt his heart quicken, his pants tighten. "It runs in the family!"

Chang watched her march down the hallway, dragging the metal along the wall. The sound grated and squealed through the rooms they passed. He thought about family for a moment. If this didn't work out...

"...You got a sister?"


	11. Now In The Dark

Note: Updated for minor consistency issues and vocabulary.

* * *

"Superficial fascia, deep fascia..." Smart Marcelo was freaking out, his breath coming in short, sharp breaths. He was still _talking._ It was a goddamn _miracle._ Smart Marcelo bubbled up words that didn't make sense to Dumb Marcelo, the first thing that came to his mind. "Transversalis fascia!" He grunted, pushed it back. _Shut the fuck up, Smart Marcelo._

Dumb Marcelo felt his legs burning, smelled the cooked meat smell. He was hungry, and that was something that was so ridiculously funny in his mind that even Smart Marcelo had to laugh at it. He was fucking hungry from smelling his _own flesh burning._

"Now, talk," the asshole was saying, and Marcelo wavered a little, in the heat of the room. His head was limp against the restraints, his teeth cracked, his chest blown apart. He wasn't going to make it―

 _No._ Marcelo didn't die, he reminded himself. He'd never been this fucked up, before, but shit, he never died. He would not be killed like this, fucking held like a goddamn prisoner in restraints―

He briefly thought of SCI Greene, and that made him laugh again. Motherfuckers hadn't made a weapon that hurt him, _yet._ He'd been beaten; shot repeatedly; blown up; run over; stabbed, _also_ repeatedly; sliced apart; set on fire; _hell,_ at one point he'd been crushed, by a _motherfucking wall,_ when the fucking _bombs_ fell―

 _Jesuchristo._ He was so tired. He'd lived a painful life. He _wanted_ it to be over.

"Gladstone," Smart Marcelo said. And wasn't he fucking _dumb?_ Giving up, now? Was it _worth_ it, to ask for more pain before the inevitable end? What would _Joey_ say―

He swore, rattling the restraints with his last ounce of energy. Some noise in the distance distracted the asshole. Marcelo felt the metal that had melted onto his chest groan and snap.

 _Aw, fuck, yeah!_

He brought both hands up and slammed them into the asshole, pushing him back to the wall, and grabbed him by those stupid little horns on his head. He screamed at the asshole, beating that cocksure fucking gray head into the cold metal wall, until it snapped in half, along his cranial sutures. Blood, brain matter, _fucking skull bones,_ exploded in his hands.

Marcelo spat blood and teeth onto the body, tossing it away. _Fuck him._

 _Fuck them all!_

He turned, and collapsed onto the floor.

* * *

Tony crouched along the sewers, looking up at the entrance to the bottom level of the compound. Lucky's detailed scouting of the place had been excellent―He ought to start his own merc group, he thought. Between him, Lucky, Romeo, and Chang... and Josephine, if his instincts were correct and Marcelo had actually managed to die in this place, he would have a nice little team.

He grinned to himself. _Well, one can hope that the motherfucker finally bit the bullet!_

Lucky was hiding further down the tunnel. Romeo held up his minigun, panting from the exertion of running down the sewers toward the explosions. They were following the sounds of Josephine and Chang as they set off the explosions on the floor above them.

"Should be about time to come up," Tony said, his head turned to the ceiling.

"Man, that Bitch of yours is fucking nuts," Romeo said. "The fuck is wrong with her?"

"She's pissed," Tony said. "Marcelo lied to her, wouldn't tell her about his past, you know... boyfriend troubles. And she's seventeen, man." He laughed a little.

"Shit, why would anyone―" Romeo stopped himself and chuckled. "Nah, man, I know. Dumb question. She's got _nice_ legs."

"Don't tell her that," Tony said. "She isn't very easy to defuse."

An unearthly shriek ran through the sewers. _"Shit!"_ Romeo yelled. "Contact!" He steadied himself and Tony heard the whirring of the minigun as he turned, raising his rifle.

Whatever they were―they went down the same as everything else in the wastes. Large, muscular two-legged beasts with gray skin and black outfits, wielding sledgehammers. The first four went down with judicious application of 5mm rounds, with Tony's .308 rounds picking up the slack. The second wave―

Romeo swore creatively. Tony grinned. Reminded him of his dad, in a way. Had the same easy-going attitude and charisma. _Guess that's why they call him Romeo!_

The second wave flew over the first, and Tony felt a hammer impacting with his arm, knocking his rifle from his hands. He yelled, and pushed the thing back with one foot, then pulled his .44 and unloaded it into the creature. Romeo bashed another with the butt of his minigun, kicking it in the head when it fell.

Two more came charging after them, and the ghouls fell back into the tunnel, back to the contingency plan.

* * *

Phoebe killed them all. She wasn't as surprised, this time, by her predilection for violence. The Dog had been right; she was a monster. What she was underneath was something to be treasured, to be hidden away until the right person came along to share it.

She walked from her room, breaking the lock on the door by jamming a hand through the wiring in the keypad. It was easy; she was surprised. They had really given her freedom, inside the compound. Perhaps, when she was done with what she wanted to do, here... Perhaps she would make the compound her own. She would rule―

Like her father. She stopped, and sniffed the air. Fire, radiation. Burning flesh and... a ghoul-smell.

She turned and entered a room to her right. Her father's smell. She stared down at the body. He stood so tall, before. Towered over her, like a true monster. Spoke with words so terrifying. Now he was a mass of bones and flesh, smashed into the ground. She touched the wall where the blood was brightest, and drew away a bit of his brain. He was so smart.

She looked down at the other heap of flesh. The ghoul. Dog.

"Dog," she said. "You need to get up."

He groaned, and quivered. "I'm so fucking _tired,"_ he muttered. "Let me die."

"Are you?" She crouched beside him. "You are so tired, you will give up?" He just let out a long, pained noise. "Are you _so tired,"_ she said, "that you will take the easy way, dying like a goddamn sickly _dog?"_

He was quiet, breathing in short bursts every thirty seconds.

 _"Are you a goddamn dog?!"_ She put her hands on her hips.

"No," he muttered.

"Then get the fuck _up,_ Marcelo!" she yelled.

It took him five whole minutes to pry himself off the ground, and another two to replace what had fallen from his chest. Phoebe gave him her shoulder, and they shuffled away from the room, her heart beating with the wailing of the alarm.

* * *

Joey was in a full-out panic. She knew it wouldn't be easy―shit, nothing was ever _that_ easy―but she couldn't make heads or tails of the hallways, and Chang wasn't helping her like he ought to be. The alarm hadn't stopped, and her head was aching, and they were out of batteries and frag grenades. She swore, muttering non-stop to herself.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" he asked, again. She spun on him and smacked him across the face, losing her temper with the ghoul.

"Fuck _you,_ man!" she shrilled. _"I'm trying!"_

He stared at her, for a moment, then grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her into the wall, hard. She struggled―dammit, was there some unspoken rule about ghouls being strong?―but he jammed her hard into the metal wall and smashed his mouth into her lips.

 _"MMMPHH!"_ she muffled, and brought her knee up, but he pinched it between his legs.

"I like my women _feisty,"_ he said, and grinned at her. Joey refused to scream, to let him have the fucking pleasure. She wormed a hand around and jabbed him with one finger in the ear-hole. He yelped and loosened his hold on her, and she slammed him backward, putting her boot directly in his crotch.

 _Thank God for accidents,_ she thought. _Once._ She'd jabbed Marcelo once in the ear, and he'd given her a black eye so bad she couldn't see for a week.

"Mother _fucker,_ the balls on _you!"_ she said, and held her rifle on his face, grinding her foot into his crotch. "I should just shoot you in the goddamn _crotch_ and let those fucking monsters find you!"

"Can't blame a guy for trying," he groaned. "We're gonna die, and you really are― _ahh!_ ―one in a million!"

A noise down the hallway grabbed her attention, and she whipped her head around to see what it was. Chang pushed the rifle to the side, launching himself at her, pushing her back into the wall again. She lost her rifle, and put out her hands, fighting him off.

 _"Motherfu―"_

He elbowed her in the face and laughed, wrapping his thighs around one of hers and thrusting into her. Joey pushed back, but he was so damn strong! _Goddammit, Tony―this is all your fault―_

A hand reached out behind him, grabbed Chang by the shoulder, and pulled him backward, then slammed him forward into the wall above her shoulder. He went limp and slid to the floor, and she watched with wide eyes.

Joey looked up at whoever had done that, and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

"Bitch..." Marcelo rasped, his entire body a messy tangle of blood, bone, and organs. "You play with _me."_

* * *

Uri could not find Phoebe. He was furious. She had _deliberately_ escaped! There was no reason she ought to have done that―and the juveniles, her own _children!_ She'd stepped on every last one of their necks, broken them without anger, without morality. She'd killed them mercifully, _effectively._

She was truly becoming the Mother, now. He wanted to grin, but the fear that ran through his veins was enough to spur him away from the horror scene, toward the enclosure that contained Nemo. Nemo would dominate her, he was stronger, faster, tougher―

And a new generation of juveniles would be raised, from the encounter, which Uri considered a boon to the rapidly dwindling population of the compound. Nemo would kill those that were assaulting T-Division, and mate with the Mother, and everything would go back to the way it ought to be.

He found the First Iron's body lying in the operating room, and quickly moved on. He moved through blood and gore, splattered through the halls. He stepped into the control room and unlocked Nemo's enclosure, and shut the lights off inside the building.

 _Now in the dark, now in the pain, now in the world that drives one insane..._

Uri smiled.

* * *

The explosions had stopped.

The fighting was over with, the silence crushing in the compound.

The lights went out and the world was dark.

And Nemo smiled, deep in the shadows of his pen. There were no longer any shadows. There was only the night, and within it, the terror that he would bring.

He could smell her, her fragrant lilies over the air, feel the heart that beat inside her chest. He would find her.

But first... blood, piss, shit, and that wonderful smell of fire and iron.

* * *

Phoebe pushed them down the hallway. _"Go, go, go!"_ she whispered, frantically. "Get _out!"_

"Marcelo _can't!"_ Joey shrieked. "Slow the _fuck_ down, Phoebe!"

 _"Be quiet!"_ she hissed. _"He'll_ hear you!"

"Who?!" Joey stumbled with Marcelo, his leg dragging uselessly. She was terrified, now. He was― _he was so fucked up―Oh, God!_

 _"Nemo!"_ Phoebe hissed at them. "You _have_ to get out! _He_ will―" she stopped and stared into the darkness. "Shit."

Something growled. Joey's heart, about to explode from sheer terror, just about gave out. She pulled Marcelo, _why was he so damn heavy,_ backwards into a room, and hit the door lock, quickly.

"Marcelo!" she cried, tears streaming down her face. "Oh, _God, baby, please!"_

"Joey," he mumbled.

She couldn't even tell where his mouth was, in his mangled face. She kissed him, long and hard, and clutched at his chest, keeping his organs inside. _"God!"_

"Louie," he rasped. "Get it."

 _"What?!"_ she gasped and watched part of his eye― _melting!―_ onto his cheek. She screamed in panic.

"Get _Louie,"_ he rasped again. _"Go,_ Joey."

"I don't know who or what that is, baby!" she cried.

"The..." he groaned. "The L-U/V gun. In the op..." He groaned again, and his hand flailed around, pointing in a general direction. _"Jesu..."_

He passed out in her arms, and she stopped. His heart was beating. He was alive―but―

Joey switched out of panic mode. She had to do what he asked. Whenever he told her what to do, she always had, and they had never, _ever,_ not made it out of a scuffle, or died. They had never, _ever,_ taken this much damage, or been cornered.

She laid him down, carefully, and adjusted him so that he was in one relative piece, and kissed him on what she was sure was a cheek. Blood and vitreous humor pulled away from his face as she stood, adjusted her jacket, and gripped her rifle.

"If you die here, while I am gone," she told his unconscious body, "then I will most certainly have to shoot you, just to be sure. Because _Marcelo does not die._ "

Josephine Calhoun stepped out into the dark hallway, locking the door behind her, and strode away, her feet thumping the metal floor without concern as to who heard it.

* * *

Tony and Romeo were pinned down in the sewers. A new enemy had appeared, the hammer-wielding creatures fell back, and now a monstrous figure in black armor was standing before them, unmoving, staring them down.

Romeo was out of ammo, had picked up one of the sledgehammers, and had ducked behind a jutting piece of rotting wood. Tony's arm was broken, but he held his .44, reloaded and ready, loose at his hip. He stood away from cover, staring back at the figure.

It was a man, but looked like Phoebe. His face was more of a monster, gray skinned and tinged with what appeared to be green speckles in the dim light of the sewer. Two straight horns rose from his head, about a foot long, jutting out like a Brahmin's horns. He stood upright, not hunching, his head brushing the ceiling of the sewer.

Tony raised an eyebrow. He didn't have claws, like Phoebe. He had hands, and they were gripping a laser rifle. Tony knew the creature only needed one shot to kill him, ghoul or not. He grinned a little. Like those old "Westerns" that Celia had told him about. Jesse had been enamored of the idea, when Tony was a small child, and his father had always played the Wild Injun to his Cowboy.

Tony spat and stood straighter. "Are we doing this?" he called out.

A deep rumble began, and slow words floated out to his ears. "If you desire that, _human."_

Tony shot a glance at Romeo. "You still all in?" he asked.

"Shit," Romeo said. "Shit, _shit, shit!_ You are bat-shit _crazy,_ Tony!" His white eyes popped in his head. "All this for some girl's _man?_ Some girl you'll _never_ get?"

"You wouldn't understand," Tony told him. And he wouldn't, either. Not even Tony understood it, really. He never had, and never would.

If Josephine was going to be the death of him―well, it was a hell of a way to go. Honorable even, given that the creature was allowing him the first strike, and most definitely would not hold any quarter against him.

Tony smiled. He reached up with his broken left arm, pulled off Josephine's mask and his eye patch, and tossed it to the side. Didn't need it, where he was going.

His face was dry. He wasn't Crying Tony, anymore.

He was free of that, now.

* * *

Chang pulled himself up off the floor, grumbling. _Stupid bitch._ His balls ached, the skin torn more than it was before. She had really ground her boot into him.

He brushed himself off and checked his rifle, and wondered where she had gone. A disturbing blood trail was drawn down the hallway, away from the way he'd come, and he followed it, noticing bits of flesh sticking out of the blood, occasionally.

Why he was going toward something so disgusting, he didn't know, but it wasn't like he couldn't handle himself. He didn't remember exactly how the bitch had gotten the upper hand on him, but she hadn't shot him in the balls like she'd threatened, or killed him. She was hell fire, and he wanted to dance in those flames. Chang grinned, his tongue coming to rest between his missing front teeth.

A sound in the darkness of the hallway brought his weapon up to his shoulder, and he advanced slowly. "Come out, come out, wherever you _are,"_ he sang. He was gonna make that bitch beg for her fucking life. He limped across the metal. _Then, maybe, she can kiss it and make it better!_

"Do you want to play?" a deep voice came from behind him. "I _love_ a good game..."

Chang spun around and fired, wildly into the darkness. Panting in fear, he let up on the trigger and reloaded when nothing presented itself to him, not even a body.

"Do you like hide and seek?" the voice said, nearly in his ear. He spun around around and loosed another clip into the darkness.

"Almost..." the voice said, and he could feel something standing behind him, breathing a sickeningly hot puff of air down his back. "But, _shame._ You are out of bullets."

Chang screamed, and the scream was cut off by a loud crunching noise, and a squish of brain matter fell to the floor.

* * *

 _Shame._ The... ghoul had not provided him with much challenge. Nemo sniffed the air. More blood and iron than he'd ever smelled before, clogging up his nostrils. The lily-smell was further away, now.

He curled his talons in and brooded over the body, staring at the torn flesh. _Ghoul,_ he thought. Not worth much in terms of protection, but longevity was something to be desired. They could live forever...

If Nemo did not kill them, first.

He grinned, and sank back into the darkness, following the Mother's scent.


	12. As Lost As Alice

Note: I got lost in some feels, with Marcelo and Joey, so uhh... Not very much going with Tony right now. Should be fixing that in the next chapter.

* * *

ROBCO INDUSTRIES UNIFIED OPERATING SYSTEM

COPYRIGHT 2075-2077 ROBCO INDUSTRIES

-SERVER 2-

TRIMOUNTAIN RESEARCH DIVISION 01

―――――――――――――――――――――

› PERSONNEL

› SECURITY

› TOP SECRET ›

2155/06/07:

I have done it, Mother. I have quelled

the beast that lays within my chest, and

injected the eggs. God help me, if they

turn out as terrible as I was warned!

But it is nearly over, Mother. My dream

of your rebirth is nearly complete. We

can only hope that the FEV variants that

I received from Dr. Donald will be a

success.

› OUTGOING MAIL (0)

› INCOMING MAIL (2)

› █

* * *

Uri shut down the console and stared into the darkness. His suspicions, while shot down by the First Iron, were accurate. He didn't know what he'd expected; given the evidence of the security logs, which he had double-checked for accuracy, there was no question that it was the First Iron who had altered the eggs.

He sighed. One hundred years of research, of the bloodlines, of the lives of so many hybrids... Ruined, by one chance brood member with aspirations to bring the ultimate broodmother into existence. The bloodlines were supposed to be untouched by outside influence. That was the _plan!_ To create a pure bloodline, to maintain numbers, to ensure the continued survival of the family. To continue the research, to make all deathclaw hybrids live longer lives, and to propagate the species into the wastes when the time was right.

To continue the work of those great men, of the Trimountain Research Division, and prove to the world their worth. Not to introduce foreign DNA to the brood, to destroy it from within by allowing an intolerable mutation to occur.

Uri leaned back in the chair, and heard the scrabbling in the darkness, the few brood members who were left either rallying to fight off intruders, or escaping. Nemo was out there, somewhere, causing pain and anguish. Why could he not have been born as Phoebe was, gentle and yielding? But still... she was unnatural, and she must be destroyed, as should Nemo.

Like all good betas, Uri would fight until death to protect the compound. But he would die. There was no chance of his continued survival, now that the compound had been compromised; most certainly no chance of survival after he released Nemo from his cage.

He grabbed up a plasma pistol, and walked into the darkness, seeking out the Mother.

* * *

Tony held his hand out to the side, holding his .44 firmly. The figure in black armor was not moving. The defenders with sledgehammers were silent behind him, holding their hammers up to their chests, staring with helmeted heads. Tony stared back with both eyes, unafraid to reveal his injury for the first time in two years.

"Romeo," he said. "If you want to go, I will not be alive to blame you."

Romeo scoffed and looked back toward the way they'd come, seeing Lucky poke his head around a corner. "Man, I barely know you. _No_ one's gonna care."

"That's true," Tony said. "Look, I made a promise to Josephine. I have to see it through, to the end. I also made a promise to Phoebe. I intend to keep them both."

"Who's Phoebe?"

A grumble ran through the creatures facing them down. Tony grinned. "Phoebe is the queen," he said, shooting a glance at the other ghoul. "The queen of these ungodly bastards."

"I don't get it," Romeo said.

"Patience," was all Tony said. He kept his .44 ready, and he listened.

The sewer was dim, and smelled foul, and in the distance, growling and banging noises could be heard. Tony listened with every inch of his ears― _had to learn to love them before they were gone,_ he thought. And he heard her.

Clicking sounds, a tiny huff of breath, and a clearing of a throat. "Tony?"

"Phoebe," he said, and smiled at her.

"You have to _leave,"_ she said, her voice small. He looked at her. She was covered in blood and shivering in a tiny hospital gown, again. No shotgun this time, though.

"I made promises," he said. He glanced at the creatures down the tunnel. The ones behind the black figure were milling, now, unsure of themselves. He grinned.

"Well, un-promise them," she said, her voice growing steadier. "Because Nemo is unleashed, and I do not wish to see anyone, who doesn't deserve to, die."

Tony gestured down the tunnel. "I'm afraid these guys aren't playing very nice, so we can't leave."

Romeo was staring, unabashedly, at the girl. Lucky had disappeared, probably took off. Tony did not blame either one of the ghouls. He looked at Phoebe with a bare head, staring at her with both eyes. She was beautiful, to him, in that moment, and terrible. She grimaced.

"Hammer," she said, her voice carrying across the tunnel. "Stand down."

The figure in black armor laughed, deeply. "We cannot, Mother. You know this."

Romeo mouthed the word _"mother?"_ at Tony. He shrugged. He had no way to know, he'd been guessing. _Guesses sometimes turn true,_ he thought. He mouthed the word _"go"_ to Romeo. The ghoul nodded, and crept away, silently.

"It is not my warning to give," she told the defenders, "but Nemo has broken his cage, and you are likely to die. You will not shoot this man." She stepped in front of Tony. "This one is mine."

Hammer growled in anger, and the defenders behind him scattered, boots beating the metal floor in haste. "Who is Nemo?" Tony asked.

"More monster than you have ever known," Phoebe muttered. "Walk with me, Tony." She moved toward Hammer. He followed, as directed. The air grew tense around them, as Phoebe led him forward.

"Stand down, Hammer," she repeated, staring at him, confidently stepping across the debris scattered across the sewer floor.

"Mother!" he snarled. "You cannot form a brood with a human!"

Tony laughed to himself. _Wouldn't matter anyway,_ he thought. He wasn't entirely human, anymore; his life would continue into the ages, through generations of Sellers. He wouldn't need to stay with Phoebe. He would outlive her by centuries.

"I do not intend to," she said, and she stopped within reach of the other hybrid. "Our bloodline is terminated, now. I am sorry, brother."

Phoebe swept a hand out and disemboweled the creature, and knocked his weapon from his hands, while he was distracted. Tony stared. She tore into the armor like it was soft cloth, ripping open the stomach and chest of the creature, shrieking and clawing. It took less than one minute for her to reduce him to a mutilated corpse. When he was dead, she told Tony to leave, and walked away from him, calmly, covered in blood and guts.

Tony swallowed hard, and started to walk backwards, in disbelief. She truly was a monster―

But he couldn't justify leaving her to this Nemo monster, nor could he leave without Josephine. He sighed. _Wasn't it just like a Sellers man to make a promise he might not be able to keep?_

Tony turned to the ladder and climbed it to the first floor, awkwardly and painfully.

* * *

Joey stepped into the operating room and saw what Marcelo had referred to; an enormous laser weapon that was mounted onto a stand in front of a partially melted gurney and restraints. She almost fell to her knees when she realized that Marcelo had been in the restraints―it was the only thing that could explain his injury. Her knees wobbled, anyway, as she pulled the laser off the mount, and carried it, puffing and huffing, back to the room she'd left him in.

On the way she collected some water and a pack of potato chips. She had the bag in her mouth when she reached the door, unlocked it with a swift punch to the keypad and moved inside.

Oh _God,_ he _wasn't breathing!_ Joey dropped the laser and grabbed a bottle of the water, dumping it onto his chest, and emptied the other one into his mouth, and he choked. She sighed in relief and sat back on her feet, and tilted his head up to drink. She spat the bag of chips to the side, and rocked back and forth, crying for him.

Marcelo was conscious in a minute or two, but there was so much gore and muscle around his face she couldn't really tell where anything was, other than the one now-empty eye socket. She sniffled, and wiped her nose, repeatedly, and held his head, gently, in her lap.

"You were a doctor," she mumbled. "Tell me how to fix this."

"Wasn't," he managed, after a moment. "Never... practiced."

"You must know _something!"_ she sputtered.

Marcelo laughed a little. "Wasn't that kind," he said, his voice fading toward the end. "Woulda... delivered babies."

She didn't respond for a moment. _"Really?"_ she asked, incredulously.

He chuckled, and groaned. "More water."

"I couldn't find any more," she said, wiping her nose. "...I'll look again."

She got up, and kicked the laser by accident, and snarled at it. L-U/V 700W INDUS/TMD01. Whatever the fuck _that_ meant. She scooped up her pack and dumped it out, and grabbed another bottle of water that had been lost in the bottom. Her disorganization was beneficial... _today._

Joey held his chest down as she slowly poured water onto the gaping hole, and winced. "Don't you go to sleep on me, Marcelo," she muttered.

"Hard to sleep around you," he answered, and his voice was growing stronger. "Fix my face."

Joey reached up, and slowly pushed aside the flap of muscle, realizing that it was part of his scalp. She patted it back into place on his skull, cringing.

"Making faces," he said.

"Baby, you've been torn to _shit,"_ she said. "It hurts me."

He chuckled. His breathing had evened out. "Poor Joey," he muttered.

"Fuck you, Marcelo," she breathed, relieved. He was being playful; he would live. She slumped in visible relaxation.

 _"Jesuchristo,"_ he groaned, lifting his right arm, peeling the coagulating blood from the floor. She inhaled sharply, at the sight of it. Someone had cut the muscles around his wrist almost to the bone. His tattoo was gone, too, all the skin removed. Tears leapt to her eyes, again.

"What do we _do?"_ she asked. "I found that Louie thing you asked for."

He grunted, and spat up blood. "Kill it."

Joey swallowed hard. His chest was slowly healing, looking like a pool of flesh filling up the dented skin. If he healed with all his organs in the wrong place―she sniffled a little. What kind of life could he lead? "Kill what?"

"Phoebe..." he coughed. "Said Nemo is out of his cage. Kill him."

"Who or what is Nemo?"

Marcelo moved his arm upward and pulled apart a bit of flesh on his face. She could hear it tearing, and she bared her teeth in pain. He stared at her from underneath it, his eye almost completely white. "Deathclaw alpha," he said, pressing the flesh back. "Kill him, Joey. Use the Louie."

"Not without you," she said, firmly. "I'm not leaving you again."

Marcelo sighed and patted his stomach, groaning in pain at the motion. "Can't," he said. "Go kill Nemo. Kill them all. Revenge."

Joey shook her head. "Not―without― _you!"_ she said, emphatically.

A crash in the distance reminded her that the door was still open, and she dragged the laser into the room, shutting the panel door quickly. To her left, she noticed a needle and grabbed it, staring at the words, mouthing to herself as she read. _Pain medicine._ She uncapped it and jabbed it into Marcelo's shoulder, depressing the plunger, without asking. He made a protest at the quick motion, then swore.

"Taking too many liberties," he said. "Gonna ruin our thing."

"I don't _care,"_ she declared. "Right now, I will be happy if you just survive this shit." She sighed, and wiped her face, sucking snot up into her nose. "Marcelo..."

"Don't say it," he grumbled.

"I _love_ you, and nothing changes that." She patted her knees, and sank to her ankles again. "Don't go whining or anything, later, about it. You've known it for a long time."

He made a rumbling noise, then coughed again. "Fuck, Joey."

"Maybe when you feel better," she said, in a straight-forward manner, and he started laughing.

* * *

Phoebe was being followed. She led the beta around the facility, trying to figure out where Nemo had gone, to draw him into the open. If she could get him into the courtyard, she could lay into Nemo without worry. Right now, she was worried that he would use the darkness of the halls to his advantage, and sneak up on her. If he did that, she would be forced to submit.

The beta followed her with a weapon. She could smell the plasma roiling in the barrel, hot air and electric current. He meant to kill her, and possibly Nemo, she knew. No beta would follow her with a weapon, if he knew what was good for him.

Phoebe stopped for a moment, and looked at the door ahead of her. It was open, leading to the courtyard. She should deal with the beta, first, then Nemo. She walked out into the courtyard.

Abandoned vehicles, a few stray sheets of metal. She glanced around, saw the fence, and the gate, swinging open. Some of the family had fled into the wastes. They would die out there, lost without a recognizable leadership. If she survived, she would round them up and reinstall them to the compound.

She stood, her back to the door, and she heard the beta's feet tapping on the metal floor, then the soft thumps on the dirt. The sky was deepening, turning black with nightfall. Phoebe remembered sunrises and sunsets, on the road with Tony and Joey and the ghoul. She smiled, gently.

Then, she spun around and destroyed the beta.

* * *

Marcelo felt the water healing him, the radiation making his muscles crawl and shiver as it grew back into a substitute for skin. Joey wouldn't leave him. She refused to, and he couldn't make her go, anymore. She was in charge now.

"Guess I _am_ Dog, now," he said, faintly. He was so fucking tired.

She chuckled a little. "You were never a dog." She ran a hand along his forehead, fixing the bits of scalp that had tried to burn away. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" he asked. It was nice, sitting with her, without having to be dominant. To really relax. Smart Marcelo shook hands with Dumb Marcelo and they became one again. He wondered if he would ever be able to hold his club again. It really didn't matter, though.

"For coming to get you," she said, wiping her nose. "For disobeying. I shouldn't have."

He shook his head slowly. "No." He breathed out, in pain. "I'm _real_ fucking glad you came."

She smiled, and it was a sad smile. He wanted to touch her, but his hands were too fucked up to work right. He shook a little. It was not a good feeling, not being able to do what he wanted.

Joey swallowed hard. "Marcelo." He grunted. "When you get better..." She blinked back tears. "I want you to take me home."

He stared at her. She'd pitched an almighty fit, before, when he'd asked Tony to take her over the water. What changed?

"I think it's time," she said, seeing his face. "Time for me to say I'm sorry to my mom. To everyone I ever pissed off or hurt." She leaned forward and kissed his head. "To Tony, most of all." She started crying again, loudly. "Oh, _God,_ Marcelo! He's―he's gonna become a _ghoul!"_

Marcelo blinked. She kept crying. He forced his hand to rise and touch her, the first gentle touch he'd given her in almost two years. That was shameful, he knew. He was a fucking monster. He didn't deserve her.

"It's not that bad," he said. "Some of us... do well for ourselves." He smiled, or at least he thought he was smiling. It was hard to tell.

She pulled open her leather jacket and blew her nose using the bottom of her shirt. "Tony―he thinks he can try for me, again. Because he'll be able to wait _forever."_

Marcelo sighed. Goddamn, that merc fuck was trouble. Too much trouble; he wouldn't be able to deal with it. _Might be best to... give in. For once._

He turned away from Joey. She saw and she grabbed his face, turning his eye back to her. "Marcelo," she said, frowning. "What?"

He cringed. "Joey, I'm fucked up," he said. "Won't be the same. We should... go different ways."

He jerked in pain, she slammed her fists down onto his chest. _"NO!"_

 _"Fuck!"_ he groaned. She gasped, and stared down at him, her face twitching, trying to keep in the pain. His lungs wheezed in protest to the assault.

 _"No,"_ she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. "You _can't_ abandon me. I just saved the _fucking day."_

Marcelo laughed, painfully. "You're so damn young..."

"I'm not _that_ young!" she said, fixing her face into a glare. "Today's my fucking _birthday,_ you _―cockbiting asshole!_ And I get― _this?!"_ She pushed him off her lap and stood, walking around in a half circle, grabbing her hair and pulling it roughly. "I―! Oh, my _God,_ I just―!" She made a frustrated noise. "If you think I'm gonna stand for this _shit―"_

"Calm down," he said. "C'mon." He lifted his hand and patted the floor.

She glared at him. "Why would you think I would _ever_ leave?" she said, forcing her voice through her teeth. "I followed you around, no matter what! I―I love _you,_ you _bastard!"_

He exhaled, felt the flush of muscles finish their work across his chest and thigh. He knew there were some misplaced organs, in there. It wasn't pleasant. He couldn't feel his ass, though. He needed to move, get the blood moving. He tried to roll over, grunting.

Joey watched him, and did not help. That was normal, at least. He scraped himself off the floor, standing on wobbling legs, feeling less of himself, from the laser burns. He spat onto the floor, and rubbed his missing eye. His arm was healed but the muscles would forever look like someone had wrapped a rubber band around his forearm, much too tightly. His legs... he shook a little, feeling very old all of a sudden.

"Josephine," he rasped, and raised his arms. She threw herself at him, and cried. "Go kill Nemo. I will not leave you," he whispered. "But we have to get out alive."

"I would do _anything_ for you, Marcelo," she murmured, and buried her fingers in his back.

His chest hurt, and not because he'd been bored through with an ultraviolet laser. It was because he _did_ love the stupid smoothskin girl, no matter what shit she pulled, or insults she gave, or even because she let him abuse her. He loved her because they _belonged_ together, and because without each other, they would be as lost as Alice, in the rabbit hole.

And there was sure as hell no fucking white rabbit to show them the way, in the wastes.


	13. As Mad As Hatter

Note: I have no idea what's going on. I'm as confused as they are.

* * *

Tony heard the crash in the distance and ducked into a room, closing the door quickly. The whole place was dark and quiet, and he was reminded of the Metro where Phoebe had been hiding. It was a little unnerving knowing that there was "more monster than you've ever known" out there, in the dark. He wasn't scared, but his spine felt like someone was running their hands up and down it, making him shiver.

 _Nerves,_ he thought. _I suppose that is something that will change, too._

He looked around the room and laid his revolver down onto a desk, then stripped off his jacket. The injury site on his arm had grown in the past week, from a quarter-sized blister of pus to a palm-sized raw wound. It was painful, rubbing against his armor, but he ignored it as well as he could.

He ran his fingers along the wound, feeling the pain. He was used to emotional pain, and compared to that... this was nothing. The skin had burst and pulled away from his arm, leaving what looked like a bundle of muscles crusted with yellow pus and red blood.

Tony stared at it. He wasn't afraid to turn into a ghoul; there wasn't much he could do about it except to accept the inevitable. And he'd been ugly for the past two years, too, so there was nothing he really could say about that. He wondered about various things, about when his hair would fall out, what would happen to his lips, when his ears would fall off.

In a particularly morbid moment, he wondered if his dick might fall off. And he laughed, because he sincerely doubted that Josephine would let Marcelo all but eat her, if she wasn't getting _something_ out of that aspect of the relationship.

He had to find her. If she hadn't been killed already―somehow the thought of her being dead didn't bring to mind as much anguish as it ought to have. He sighed, and pulled his jacket on, and made his way out of the room.

It was deathly silent. He crept along the hallway, his ears straining. A scuffling noise in the darkness brought him to a stop. He could hear muffled talking. Raspy talking.

Goddammit, was it too much to ask that the fucking immortal bastard would be dead?

He moved to a door and pressed his ear to it. Muffled voices from inside were definitely Josephine and Marcelo; they were... fighting? God, he hoped it was only an argument, given how violent Marcelo could be. He reached up and was about to open the door when he heard Josephine shriek. _"NO!"_

Tony removed his hands from the door. She was in pain, and he couldn't do a damn thing to help her. _As always._ He might be free of her, of her troubles, in his mind, but his body still reacted the way it always had, wanting to jump in and save the day, and feel her hugging him... and other things. It wasn't that he'd never―he and Helen had fooled around. It wasn't the same with Josephine, though. Helen had been practically a stranger, compared to her.

Tony sat against the door and looked up and down the hallway. Behind him, he could hear Josephine sobbing, and his heart hurt for her. He couldn't tell what they were fighting about. It was quiet for a few minutes. He heard Marcelo call her by her full name.

Tony stood up and walked away. Whatever was going on in there, he wasn't welcome. If Marcelo was finally treating her like a decent human being and not just the bitch... Calling her _Josephine,_ like he had, his entire life...

Fuck him, he had no chance. He never had. Tony yelled in frustration and kicked the wall. He stared at his .44, and raised it to his temple.

Just once... just once, he wanted Josephine to look at him with those black eyes and tell him she wanted him like she wanted that fucking decaying bastard.

* * *

Joey had bitten her lip while she was frustrated with Marcelo and now blood was oozing into her mouth, tasting bitter. He was still really fucked up but he was upright and moving, and that was all they needed. She pulled the strap of the laser up over her shoulder and hoisted it, feeling her muscles straining.

"I get to be the strongman now," she laughed.

Marcelo just twitched his ragged mouth and nodded. He was subdued, broken, and beaten. She didn't like it, but he was still her Marcelo, somewhere in there. She would polish the surface until he shined again.

"How does this thing work?" she asked, flipping switches.

Marcelo rolled a shoulder. "I wasn't paying attention," he said. "I was bracing for impact."

Joey glanced at him, her face concerned. "How many times did they shoot you?"

He touched his chest, and grunted. "Twice."

She touched a button and heard the innards of the weapon begin to activate. Whirring and swishing sounds met her ears. She grinned. "Aw, _fuck,_ yeah." Marcelo laughed behind her. "C'mon, baby," she said to him. "Let's go hunt us a deathclaw."

Joey stepped out into the darkness, and her hands tightened on the laser. It was like holding a minigun, but heavier, and she could tell it was going to be difficult to aim, unless Marcelo helped her steady it―but he was too sore and tired to help.

A shot rang out through the hallway. Joey's head turned toward the sound, and she motioned Marcelo with her head, moving down the metal path.

 _"Fuck!"_ Tony yelled, and Joey sighed.

"Tony!" she called. "Get over here, I can't see shit in this place."

He didn't respond right away, but she heard his boots sliding along the floor, and he came into view, bleeding from the side of his head. Joey raised an eyebrow. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing," he said, looking miserable. "What happened to _you?"_ he asked Marcelo.

"These _motherfuckers_ tried to cook him with this laser," Joey said, snarling. "And I aim to get my revenge."

Tony stared at Marcelo. Joey realized he had taken off his eye patch, and she stared at his eyes. Tony had the most brilliant blue eyes, even in the darkness of the hallway. They shimmered like the wasteland sky through a heat wave, and he always looked so intense, it was hard to let go of his gaze. Right now, he looked upset, but his eyes were those of a man determined. _He doesn't realize how strong he is,_ she thought.

"C'mon, Tony," she said, adjusting her grip. "We're gonna track down this Nemo character and put a size 700 ultraviolet laser up his _ass."_

"Yeah," he said, sighing. "Yeah, okay." He holstered his revolver.

Marcelo stared at the blood on Tony's head. Joey looked at the ghoul. "I see you managed to fuck it up on your own," he told Tony.

Tony jerked and looked away. She frowned. "You tried to shoot yourself?" she asked. He didn't answer. _"Goddammit,_ Tony, I _meant_ what I said!" She growled and glared. "You finish the fucking job, _first!"_

He sighed. "It's too much to ask for, Josephine."

"Look―" she felt the laser getting heavy, and laid it onto the floor. "I love you both, you know that!" She grabbed Tony by the front of his jacket. "We fucking grew _up_ together, Tony! We were compatriots, the grease to each other's gears, the fuel to our own fires! I will never― _never_ give that love up, and you trying to kill yourself―it _hurts_ me! All these feelings you have for me―at least _listen_ to them, for once in your fucking life, and _stop hurting yourself!"_

Tony stared at her, his eyes moving back and forth in his face. She felt the pain swelling, and started tearing up. She let him go, and wiped her face.

 _"Fuck_ you guys, making me cry on my fucking _birthday."_ She grabbed up the laser, and moved down the hallway. "Fuck you all."

Marcelo turned to Tony and extended a hand to to man, gripping his shoulder weakly. "We're both broken, now," he rasped. "You see that?"

"It's not a nice feeling, is it?" Tony asked him, staring after Joey.

"She still loves us," Marcelo said. "That's all I need."

Tony sighed, and wiped blood from his forehead. "Yeah... yeah, but you _still_ got the girl."

"Life," he answered. "It's funny like that. Come on, merc."

They walked after her, listening carefully. Joey grumbled to herself.

* * *

Phoebe trailed her hand along the wall, feeling the cold metal on her fingertips, hearing her claws scraping. "Brother," she called out. _"Nemo!"_

There hadn't been a sign from him, since she killed the beta in the courtyard. She couldn't hear anything other than an occasional step in the distance, boots on metal, and a gunshot. She heard Joey yelling. She hoped that the humans and ghoul would leave, get out of the compound. Nemo would tear them apart without much concern.

Phoebe stopped in place. She ought to follow them, make sure they got out, but if she was near them, Nemo would find them faster. Wherever he was. She didn't understand why he was hiding. He loved playing games with people. Why he hadn't shown up to kill them―

He was stalking them, probably. He was waiting for the moment he felt best to take them apart. From what she knew, he didn't kill without a reason. ...Though his reasons were sometimes difficult to understand. She looked up at the ceiling and stared into the darkness. Was he waiting for her to go to the people? Or was he waiting until they tried to leave, and would kill them, then?

"NEMO!" she yelled, into the darkness. "I _will_ find you!"

"You needn't bother," he growled, from behind her. She spun and threw out her hands, but he was not there.

"Are you playing with me, brother?" she asked. "Hiding so that I cannot hurt you?"

"I find it laughable that you think you can hurt me, at all," he said, from above her. "We are meant to be together, sister."

Phoebe shuddered. "I will not submit to you," she said, firmly. _"Never."_

"You may change your mind," he rumbled, and she felt herself moving through the air, trapped in his hand. He brought her up to his face, and held her away from reach. She could see his mouth, stained with blood, curling into a terrible grin. "After all, we are the only two of our kind, in the world."

"Just because I am like you, does not mean I _belong_ with you," she muttered, and he squeezed her chest, hard.

"Does it not?" Nemo laughed, and slammed her into the wall. "We are similar in all ways, does that mean we aren't compatible? We are _monsters,_ Phoebe!" He pulled her away from the wall. "No other creature in the world could _begin_ to comprehend our pain."

Phoebe's head screamed in pain, and she grabbed hold of his wrist, digging her claws in. "I found that is not true," she told him, baring her teeth. "I found that belonging with someone is both painful―and _wonderful―"_

Nemo squeezed her and she felt the air forced from her lungs. "You were tainted by the Wilder Wastes," he growled, and ran a talon along her chest to her chin with his free hand.

"No!" she breathed out, and her claws scraped the bones of his wrist. "I was _enlightened!"_

Nemo snarled and slammed her to the floor, his hand covering the breadth of her chest. He positioned himself over her, and leaned down, breathing hot air into her ear. "You will submit to me," he said, and she opened her eyes wide, and couldn't breathe. His hand on her chest―he was stopping her from shrieking, he knew it would make him weakened. She opened her mouth, anyway, and tried, but all she could manage was a miserable squeak of air.

 _"Dear_ sister," he breathed, and she felt the pain ripping through her abdomen, and she screamed inside her head.

* * *

Joey was angry, making a lot of noise. That was fine, because it meant that the deathclaw called Nemo would find them sooner. Marcelo held his leg where the laser had gone through him and limped along behind her and Tony, trying to think of a plan.

Fuck, he was hurting. Joey thought he could go forever―and shit, seemed like he had, in the past, but there was always a wall, and he'd hit it head first this time. He was definitely not bouncing back from this one. He didn't heal like she did, where her cells would even themselves out, eventually. Take a chunk out of a ghoul, that chunk was gone forever.

He grunted in pain, and slowed down. And he couldn't even fucking help her, right now, couldn't hold a weapon, couldn't beat down a monster. He was a little disappointed in that. He smiled, remembering the super-ghoul in St. James. Man, if Marcelo could take down an alpha deathclaw―

But that wasn't really who he was. Marcelo was back to who he used to be, before the War. Before he was thrown in jail, before the drugs, before he lost his head at college. Before Hol― _Fuck!_

He came to a stop, and stared at his hands, blinking rapidly. Fuck him, he'd lost that memory on purpose. Now Holly was coming back to haunt him?

Joey turned her head and stopped short, Tony bumping into her back. "Marcelo?" she said, concerned.

He forced himself to look up. "I'm―" The words died in his throat. Holly, fucking _Holly,_ dancing around in his head, wearing her leotard, grinning from the stage at him in the audience, kicking out her legs―Holly, on the monkey bars in the park, hanging by her knees, kissing him upside down―Holly, writhing under him, crying out, while he loved her―

 _Holly,_ pulling the rubber band around her arm, shooting up that shit, going into cardiac arrest.

Marcelo groaned and covered his face. _Jesuchristo,_ he was in a bad way. He'd pushed too many memories back, and the hands that held them away were slipping.

Joey edged past Tony and came to his side. "Marcelo," she said, her voice even. "Come on."

"I can't," he said. "I can't, right now."

"What is it?" she asked him. Joey... her eyes shining, shooting at raiders, grinning at him with that crazy smile of hers. Joey, her skin smooth on his torn flesh, fighting against him, going limp under his hands. Joey, holding him tenderly, loving him even though he was filth, loving him even if he hurt her. He'd hurt her so much.

"Nothing," he said, "nothing. It's in the past." Marcelo lowered his hands and grabbed her face, pulling her to him in a kiss.

* * *

Tony found the door to the outside, while they were speaking, and walked out into the courtyard. Night had fallen, and the moon was half-full, shining onto the ground with soft light. Josephine and Marcelo followed him outside, and he stood there, silently, staring out into the world.

"We could just _leave,"_ Josephine said, startling the men. Both turned to look at her, surprised. She shrugged. "If we go, we'd be too far away for Nemo to kill."

"I'm not leaving Phoebe to deal with that," Tony said. "None of us even know what the hell this Nemo guy really is―"

Marcelo rumbled. "You _need_ to see," he said. "It's a lesson from the wastes."

Tony nodded. "Plus, there's the Republic, over there. Can't let them in danger."

"Well, fuck," Josephine muttered. "I don't see how we're gonna be able to find him―"

A clattering noise behind them sounded, and they turned. Joey held her hand on the laser, her face grim; Tony pulled his revolver and stared. Marcelo just stood in place, hands at his side, looking defeated. Tony entertained a brief thought of shooting him in the head, but it passed. The only person he'd shoot today would be himself, and he knew it.

Phoebe stumbled from the doorway, knocking over a sheet of corrugated metal. She was bloodied, and walking slowly, her legs trembling. "Get out," she moaned. _"Just―go!"_

Joey grinned a little, her face contorting. Tony sighed. "I promised," he said.

In the darkness behind Phoebe, a gray figure emerged, folding out like a piece of paper, arms extending and to the side, legs crouching in the low ceiling of the hall. It stepped out into the courtyard, rising to it's full height, lifting that demon head to the sky, horns curling up and out, burning eyes turning to the people staring him down. He was twelve feet tall, gray like Phoebe, a bipedal figure of bumpy skin and rippling muscles, with arms that were too long for his body, thin fingers and claws that looked like black spikes extending from his hands. A long, ridge-backed tail swung out behind him, slowly moving back and forth in a deliberate movement. Everything about him _screamed_ terror, from the spines on his back to the tensed legs, ready to spring.

Marcelo trembled. Joey pulled the trigger on the laser, shrieking. Tony aimed his revolver, _and―_


	14. Edge of the World

The laser shot out of the barrel, glowing bright purple in the darkened courtyard, blinding him. He swore, loudly, in pain, backing away, and heard an unearthly roar.

 _"The ones who came before, they built them on purpose." Marcelo shifted his weight in the chair and stared at the mercenary. "They made these deathclaws to replace soldiers in battle, so that human life would not be lost."_

Tony hit the dirt behind him, tripping on a piece of asphalt, and his head impacted with something hard. His vision was flooded with white―spots flew across his eyes, like dust swirling with the wind.

 _"And they made them monsters, because they had to be able to take a hit, immune to radiation because they had to be able to go where a normal soldier couldn't." Marcelo grunted. "Didn't think they would escape, that they would get out into the world, and breed."_

Josephine was screaming, a full-throated scream, and the laser was whirring. He could hear crackling, loud snapping sounds, and Phoebe was shrieking. He pushed himself up, holding his hands across his face, his eyes watering.

 _"It takes a lot to bring one down. A lot." Marcelo elbowed Josephine and chuckled. "Almost as much as it takes to bring Marcelo down." Josephine grinned, her eyes dancing in her face. "If there had been deathclaws in Michigan, and I knew about it_ _―_ _" Marcelo shrugged. "Wouldn't have come across the lake."_

A rough hand hauled Tony up off the ground, bringing him to his feet. "Let's _go,"_ Marcelo said, and half-dragged him away from the screams and cracking, away from the rumble of the building falling apart, away from Josephine's screams.

Tony shook the hand off and wiped his eyes, staring up at Marcelo, blinking repeatedly. "What―"

Marcelo reapplied his hand and dragged him away again. "We die _now,_ or we don't die at all, Tony!"

Tony squeezed his eyes open and shut again, and swallowed. "But―"

"You know Marcelo _does not die,"_ he said. _"Let's go!"_

* * *

Joey jammed her eyes shut when the laser came out of the gun― _God, no wonder Marcelo's eye melted!―_ and did not let up on the trigger, even when the thing started to roar in such a terrible manner―

One of the long-fingered hands swept out and ripped the laser from her, pulling her with it, and she screamed in terror and pain, lifted into the air, dangling perilously by the L-U/V's strap. Phoebe shrieked at the top of her lungs, and Nemo jerked in surprise, and tossed Joey to the side.

The laser ripped and tore away from her and she hit the side of another building, grunting, before she fell to the ground. She rolled over and pushed herself upwards, coughing at the dust. _Shit, really should have got my helmet back from Tony,_ she thought. She could barely see.

Phoebe shrieked again and Joey looked over the bed of a truck, hiding behind it. Nemo had been hit, at least a little―his arm was squirting blood and a line of mangled flesh had been etched across part of his chest. The laser also had hit the building behind him, tearing into it. Joey looked around, saw the laser, and ran for it.

Nemo roared again and swiped at her, catching a foot and pulling her up into the air, and he held her upside down, staring at her viciously with those strange glowing eyes. She swore and held her shirt, tucking it into her pants so it wouldn't fall into her face, and as he brought her closer to his face, she screamed again.

Her free leg came up in a perfect kick, landing right in his eye, as hard as she could. Nemo growled and tossed her away again, laughing. Laughing like a person, and Joey's eyes widened as she arced through the air, in surprise. She hit the truck and cried out, feeling something snap.

 _"Fuck!"_ she hissed, trying to push herself up again. Nemo grumbled and pointed at Phoebe, arguing in a low voice with her. Joey watched them, her arm shaky, pulling herself up along the side of the truck. Her collarbone or shoulder blade had been broken, and she gritted her teeth, cradling her shoulder.

Joey saw the laser across the yard, and felt the pain in her shoulder, and set her mouth into a line. Marcelo and Tony were nowhere to be seen; that was _good,_ because Joey didn't want either one of them dying on her watch, even Tony with his willful notion of suicide. She pushed herself up all the way to her feet, and stood, panting in fear.

A long, thin, piece of metal was on the ground nearby. She picked it up and ran across the yard, trailing it beside her leg. Nemo swung out again, laughing, and she whipped the metal at his head, distracting him. It hit him across the face, and he grumbled, withdrawing his hand to protect himself, but Joey had gotten to the laser before he focused on her again.

She fell to her knees, wedged it between her legs, and aimed. _"Fuck you!"_ she screamed, and pulled the trigger. She closed her eyes and prayed.

* * *

Phoebe saw what Joey was doing, and tried to distract Nemo enough to help her. She could not―she could not attack Nemo, anymore. She had submitted, albeit _unwillingly,_ and something in her brain just would not let her raise a hand to him. She growled in frustration and shrieked, slammed her hands into the wall of the compound.

"Sister," Nemo said, poking a long finger at her, "these humans are quite fun, although they do not withstand much damage."

"Leave her _alone!"_ Phoebe hissed at him. "She helped me, in the wastes!"

"Then she should be killed, for knowing what you are," he grumbled back, and turned to face Joey. "And any others who might be aware of us." He roared, his mouth opening wider, spittle flying from his jaws, and sprang at the girl.

Phoebe shrank away from the brightness of the laser, glimmering in the night air, as it impacted with Nemo's face and jerked away in a line, hitting the building behind them. It dug into the concrete, and cut a groove across the surface. Phoebe saw this, and her brain screamed at her.

 _Defend the brood! Defend the Alpha!_

She clapped her hands to her ears and shrieked again, and the laser died out. Nemo stood still, his face crackling, smoke rising from the laser line, his luminous eyes blinking slowly. The building collapsed behind them, and Phoebe curled into a ball, feeling the concrete hitting her, burying her.

* * *

The building crumbled, and Marcelo's hand directed the merc to a point well enough away from the courtyard that they could see the damage. A wall fell, dropping to the ground, dust rising from inside the fence. It covered the ground in a thick blanket, and neither one of the ghouls could see what was going on.

Tony pulled himself free again and Marcelo glanced at the man, seeing his eyes blinking rapidly. He should have warned them; he hadn't even thought about it. Marcelo touched his remaining eye and winced. It was lucky for him he would still see, he'd taken more of the laser than any of them.

 _"Josephine!"_ Tony yelled. _"Damn―"_

Marcelo covered the man's mouth and made a shushing gesture. "There are others from that place, wandering out here," he muttered. "Shut the fuck up."

Tony pulled his revolver and put it to Marcelo's head, pushing it into the bloodied flesh of his temple. Marcelo stared at him, tiredly, his hand dropping to his side. "You _fucking bastard!"_ Tony growled. "You―you _left_ her there! To fight that _―thing!"_

"Joey knows what she has to do," Marcelo said. She did, too. He'd promised her, and she would do what he asked, to fulfill the promise. If she died doing it... Marcelo sighed. He was so fucking tired.

"You― _You_ are supposed to be the strong one!" Tony hissed, gritting his teeth. _"You_ are the one who fights the monsters! _Not her!"_

"We both know I'd die," Marcelo said, quietly.

"Marcelo does _not die!"_ Tony yelled, and punched him in the face with his broken arm, weak but still strong enough to be painful. Marcelo grunted, stumbled back.

Tony kicked him in the stomach, and flipped his gun around, cracking Marcelo in the forehead with the butt of it when he doubled over. He went down, mostly because he was just too fucking sore and tired to deal with it. He laid on the ground, hands curled up at his stomach, bad eye in the dirt, and breathed evenly.

Tony crouched by him and pressed the gun to his temple again. "If I killed you now, and she manages to make it out of there, _I_ would get the girl, this time."

Marcelo laughed, tiredly. "I don't know, Tony," he said. "She _is_ her mother's daughter."

The merc growled. "So _what?_ I'm fucking turning into one of you freaks, anyway. She'd just have to wait a little while, and she'd have a _brand-fucking-new_ ghoul to love."

Marcelo stared at him. He envied the man, really. Tony had never had to live through the bombs, through the terror of the immediate post-apocalypse; he'd been trained by the best possible person, Amos, who Marcelo respected had had quite a long life for a non-ghoul; he'd grown up with Joey and her family―he still _had_ family, even. Marcelo had none of those things. He'd done it all, alone, without anyone, until Joey came along.

But Tony had really gone over the edge, now. Threatening Marcelo―and when the ghoul was so bloody and beaten, he could barely fight him off? It was a despicable act, something Amos would not be proud to know the man was doing.

"And you think it's so easy to get over the death of a loved one?" Marcelo asked. "That she'll be willing to let go, after year or two?"

"Time heals all wounds," Tony said. "Even _mine."_

"No," Marcelo said, stubbornly. "It doesn't. The pain stays, even after the scar forms. You―"

Tony kicked dirt into his face. "Fuck _you,_ man. The only fucking thing you know about pain is how to _cause_ it."

Marcelo coughed and laughed a little. "True," he said. _"Very_ true." He coughed again. "I had to, to survive. You turn into a ghoul, you gotta do the same thing."

"Well, I guess it's good that Josephine _likes_ it rough, then, huh?" Tony pulled the hammer back on the revolver.

Marcelo stared at him, his eye hardened. "Who said that?"

Tony growled, and pushed the gun harder into his head. "You― _fucking_ her, like you have been, _biting_ her―for _two years?!"_

"She doesn't like that," Marcelo said. "She lets me because _I_ like to." God help him for lying. He was never a good person, even before the War. ...It was time.

Tony looked surprised. _"Fuck you,"_ he snarled, his face contorting.

"Joey would do _anything_ for someone she loves," Marcelo told him. "Shoot me, Tony. I _deserve_ to die." ...He'd caused too much anguish for her. He did deserve to die, even if he had to lie, to give the merc his chance.

 _"Motherfucker!"_ Tony hissed, and began to squeeze the trigger.

But Marcelo had been alive for far too long, to even try to die.

* * *

Joey dug herself out of a pile of rubble, coughing and spitting up blood. She sprinted away from the courtyard, away from the monsters, away from the mess of whatever the fuck had just happened. She saw the long legs of the Nemo creature sticking out from the pile of crumbling concrete, covered in blood. Phoebe was somewhere, she supposed, but she wasn't going to stick around to find her. She had to find the men.

 _"Marcelo!"_ she screamed. _"Tony!"_

A gunshot came out of the trees to her left, and she took a deep breath, turning herself. _Oh, God! Tony!_ She ran, as fast as her jellied legs would carry her, toward the trees. She burst over a rock and fell to the ground, tripping over her own feet.

Tony was slumped sideways, laying on the ground. Both his hand and Marcelo's were on top of his .44, a pool of blood coming from under Tony's head. Joey shrieked, and crawled over to him, grabbing him by the shoulders, watching his head loll in her arms.

"He'll probably live," Marcelo rasped, lying beside them. He rolled over onto his side, and lay there, staring at Tony. Joey cradled Tony, looking at his head, trying to find the wound.

"Where―?" she said, and cursed. A deep groove in his skull, above his ear, bleeding nastily. The bullet had carved through the top of his ear, into the scalp, and traveled up into the top layer of bone. _"Jesuchristo,_ the only thing that saved him was his fucking thick skull!" she moaned. She shot a look at Marcelo. "What _happened?"_

Marcelo coughed and let out a small laugh. "Oh, I tried to get him to kill me."

She growled. "That's not _funny,_ asshole!"

"S'truth," Marcelo said, raising a hand to his heart.

Joey lifted a leg and swiftly kicked Marcelo in the side, pulling the force because he was still injured badly. "Why the fuck would you?" she asked, angrily. "You _promised_ you wouldn't leave!"

Marcelo grunted with the kick. "Didn't say I was trying to die," he said. "Not the same fucking thing."

"Yeah, well, we all know that bit, _don't we?_ " Joey spat. _"Fuck you,_ Marcelo. Quit fucking tempting fate. Eventually it's gonna catch up to you. Why did he shoot himself, and not _you?"_

"Don't I know it," he muttered. He rolled onto his back, but didn't answer her.

Joey wiped blood from Tony's head, then unbuckled her leather jacket and tossed it to the side, pulling off her shirt. She applied pressure to the wound, using the cotton.

Marcelo grumbled a little. "What? _What,_ the fuck, is it?" she snarled. "I'm really fucking tired of all this."

"Don't like it, is all," he rasped. "Tony comes to, sees that?"

"Like he hasn't before," she rolled her eyes. "Fuck, he practically asked me for sex on the barge, when we realized he was turning ghoul."

Marcelo made a threatening noise and pushed himself up off the ground. "Shoulda fucking let him get eaten," he muttered.

"Yeah, well, if he hadn't come with me, I'd be right there beside you in the torture chamber," she said. She ran a hand along Tony's hair and pushed his hair out of his face. He looked very peaceful, breathing slowly and evenly. She sighed. "Marcelo..."

"Nemo's dead?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered.

"You still want to go home?" the ghoul asked, examining his clothes. Joey hadn't even noticed, but the fabric was shredded up, burnt into his skin from the laser.

"Yes," she said. "It's important."

"Alright," Marcelo said. "Need caps."

Joey looked over at the compound, bits of the building still slowly crumbling away from the wall. A figure was moving near the fence, and she saw the glint of goggles in the moonlight. "We'll be fine," she said, and she yelled over the rock at Lucky, who was certainly living up to his name.

* * *

They spent a week in the Republic, and Joey wore her bloodstained clothes with pride, staring down any asshole who wanted to make something happen. Tony woke from his concussion and was very confused, but refused to apologize to Marcelo. When Marcelo was healed enough to travel, they left.

Marcelo didn't bother with words, either. He'd baited the man, on purpose. He was the one who should have been doing the apologizing. Later, he told Joey about it, in full, and she slapped him across the cheek, and was mad for a long time. That was good, he thought. He'd earned that one.

Before they got to Gladstone, he told her about his past, what he could remember and what he felt comfortable telling her. Not Holly, that was something for another time, but he did tell her about college and getting hooked on heroin.

"What was your name, then?" she asked him.

He was surprised. "Marcelo," he said. What else would he go by?

"No, your full name. Everyone has a first and last name, don't they?"

Marcelo chuckled. "I suppose." He stared at her over the ground, and shrugged. "Antonio Marcelo Arantes."

She dropped her rifle. "You―"

"Yeah," he said, smiling. "Yeah, I'm a Tony."

Joey didn't say anything for a long time, and he laid himself onto the ground, feeling the hard ground behind his back. _"Motherfucker,"_ she swore.

Marcelo laughed, and stretched out, and she joined him, curling up with him under the stars that hadn't changed in so many years, even though the world under them was so much more different, now.

* * *

Tony left his eye patch off. He didn't need it now, anyway. Whatever happened to ghouls... he didn't have any tears to cry, anymore. It was over, and he was already dead. He didn't need to shoot himself in the head. He kept telling himself that, and eventually, he started to believe it.

Josephine told him the truth, and told him that she would never leave Marcelo, regardless of what anyone else felt, _including_ Marcelo. He wasn't surprised, at Marcelo's lying or at her particular brand of bullheadedness. He'd only lashed out at Marcelo because she made it exceptionally clear that she thought of Tony as a brother, for growing up together. But that shot across his head―well, he should have fucking known better, shouldn't he? _Marcelo don't die._ Tony sighed to himself. It was his turn, now, wasn't it.

And, now that he was changing, he felt like he might as well learn what real patience was. It wasn't like he could die of old age, anyway. Dr. Donald taught him that one. She explained what she could about ghouls, and Marcelo filled in the gaps.

 _This is gonna hurt like hell,_ he thought. But, fuck, he was used to pain.

His family was to be told, but he waited on that until he got confirmation of his ghoul status from Dr. Donald, and saw Josephine and Marcelo over the water to Toskey. He left them, there, and went the long way home, traveling through the mountains north of Grayling, through Mackinaw City, and along the Hi-Highway west to Gladstone.

 _After all,_ he thought, _it's not like I don't have all the time in the world, is it?_

Anthony Sellers sat on the edge of the world, stared across it, and it stared back.

And he liked what he saw.

* * *

PROBABLY THE END


End file.
